Skip to main content

Full text of "Talks in a library with Laurence Hutton"

See other formats 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
DAVIS 


, 


y  ^ 

^™^-^^ 
^fA**^  xr 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


TALKS  IN  A  LIBRARY 

WITH 

LAURENCE  MUTTON 


RECORDED  BY 

ISABEL  MOORE 


ILLUSTRATED 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

Gbe  Tkmcfcerbocfcer  press 

1909 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
DAVIS 


COPYRIGHT,  1905 
BY 

EI/EANOR  v  HUTTON 


Published,  May,  1905 

Reprinted,  November,  1905 ;  December,  1905 
July,  1906  ;  January,  1907  ;   February,  1908 
June,  1909 


Ube  fmicfcerbocfeer  press,  Hew 


TO 
JOSEPH  JEFFERSON 

THE  BEST  OF  MEN  :  THE  BEST  OF  FRIENDS  :  AND  THE 
ONLY   PLAYER   IN  HIS  OWN  GROUP 

L.  H. 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE 

THK  writer  of  this  note  was  one  of  those  who  from 
time  to  time  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  sitting  in  the 
library  of  L,aurence  Hutton,  and  of  hearing  from  the 
lips  of  his  genial  host  (a  man  with  a  genius  for  friend 
ship  and  for  attracting  friends)  informal  talk  concerning 
the  friends  with  whom  Hutton  had  been  associated 
during  a  life  that,  while  all  too  brief,  was  certainly  full 
and  that  in  many  ways,  and  particularly  in  this  matter 
of  personal  relation,  was  assuredly  fortunate.  As  we 
moved  about  between  the  fascinating  collections  of  the 
well- furnished  shelves  and  walls  of  the  library  in  the 
Princeton  country  home,  one  thing  and  another — por 
traits,  autograph  letters,  inscribed  books,  play-bills, 
menus  of  old-time  dinners — brought  to  the  mind  of 
the  host  recollections  of  friends,  very  many  of  whom 
had  already  "joined  the  majority."  The  word  of 
reference,  the  anecdote  or  the  story,  was  always  kindly 
and  was  not  only  picturesque  in  itself  but  doubly  in 
teresting  in  characterising  the  speaker  no  less  than  the 
person  described. 

I  suggested  to  my  host,  as  had  doubtless  often  before 
been  suggested,  that  he  ought  to  put  into  print  his 
varied  memories  of  men  and  of  things.  "  Yes,"  he 

v 


flntrotwcton?  IRote 


replied,  "  it  would  be  a  pleasant  task  except  for  the 
labour  of  the  writing.  I  find  myself  growing  lazy  in 
my  old  age"  (he  was  still,  of  course,  young  enough, 
but,  as  was  afterwards  realised,  was  really  growing 
weaker)  "and  I  cannot  now  apply  myself  to  any  regular 
task  work.  If  I  could  talk  about  my  friends  into  an 
appreciative  and  discriminating  phonograph,  it  would 
be  a  pleasure  to  put  the  reminiscences  on  record." 

The  responsibility  seemed,  therefore,  to  come  to  Mr. 
Hutton's  publishing  friend  for  meeting  this  rather 
special  requirement.  The  publisher  succeeded  in  find 
ing  in  the  skilled  literary  worker  who  has  recorded 
these  "Talks  in  a  Library"  a  "phonograph"  that 
was  both  sympathetic  and  discriminating,  and  it  is 
through  her  tactful  and  conscientious  service  that  it 
has  proved  possible  to  preserve  in  book  form  this 
memorial  of  the  genial  owner  of  the  library.  The 
volume  will,  of  course,  have  a  personal  value  for  those 
who  knew  Hutton,  while  it  should  prove  of  interest 
also  to  a  wide  circle  to  whom  its  pages  will  bring  their 
first  impression  of  his  charming  personality. 

The  manuscript  was  revised  by  Mr.  Hutton  before 
his  last  illness,  but  the  printing  of  the  record  of  these 
Talks  was  not  begun  until  after  his  death.  The 
volume  stands  as  his  final  word  to  his  friends  and  to 
the  public. 

G.  H.  P. 


INTRODUCTION 

THE  words  which  here  follow  were  all  talked  in  a 
Library. 

Some  of  them,  elaborated  and,  since,  re-elaborated, 
have  already  appeared  in  periodical  form. 

The  others,  during  the  autumn,  winter,  and  spring 
of  1903-04,  were  talked  into  sympathetic  ears,  and 
were  recorded  by  a  willing  pen,  in  the  talker's  own 
book-room  at  Princeton.  As  set  down  in  these  pages, 
they  have  been  submitted  to  him,  and  have  been  the 
subject  of  his  revision  and  correction. 

He  protests  that  the  words  are  too  personal.  But 
he  does  not  see  how  he  can  leave  himself  out  and  at 
the  same  time  do  full  justice  to  the  personal  side  of 
his  friends. 

LAURENCE  HUTTON. 

PRINCETON,  May,  1904. 


vii 


THE  motto  of  the  family  of  Mr.  Laurence  Hutton  is 
to  the  effect  that  nothing  that  is  human  is  foreign  to 
them;  and  the  individual  note  of  appreciation  was 
struck  by  Walcott  Balestier  who  wrote  in  one  of  the 
Hutton  Guest  Books — that  are  a  record  within  a  record 
— "  To  Laurence  Hutton :  who  finds  the  way  to  Heaven 
by  doing  deeds  of  hospitality."  Had  Mr.  Hutton  ever 
added  to  his  Landmarks  series  a  volume  on  the  Literary 
Landmarks  of  New  York,  he  would  have  had  to  con 
sider  his  own  home  as  one  of  the  most  notable  features 
connected  with  such  associations,  as  well  as  a  personi 
fication  of  a  most  exquisite  friendliness  of  man  for  man. 

That  I  have  been  permitted  to  know  the  hospitality 
of  Mr.  Hutton,  and  to  a  certain  degree  his  friendship, 
as  well  as  something  of  his  literary,  dramatic,  and 
artistic  interests,  will  always  be  to  me  a  gracious 
memory. 

ISABEL  MOORE. 

YORK,  March,  1905. 


CONTENTS 
CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

Stories— Early  Days — First  Money  Earned — Mr.  Aldrich 
—  The  Strangeness  of  Coincident  —  The  Colonel  — 
My  Barber— First  Poetical  Efforts  .  .  .  .1-31 

CHAPTER  II 

First  Published  Article  —  Charles  Dickens's  Reading  — 
Dickens  as  an  Actor  in  Liverpool — Florence — Irving 
as  Dombey — The  Younger  Dickens — An  Extraordi 
nary  Man 32-57 

CHAPTER  III 

Recollections  of  the  Stage  — Plays  and  Players — Fred 
erick  Warde  —  Henry  Irving's  Generosity  —  Edwin 
Booth— The  Players  Club— Death  of  Lawrence  Barrett  58-89 

CHAPTER  IV 

Joseph  Jefferson  —  Lawrence  Barrett  —  Lester  Wallack — 
Henry  J.  Montague  —  "  Billy  "  Florence  —John  Mc- 
Cullough— Mrs.  Keeley — Mrs.  Maeder  .  .  90-118 

CHAPTER  V 

Imaginary  "Copy  " —  Dramatic  Criticism— Letters  to  The 
Evening  Mail  —  The  Funeral  of  Henry  Kingsley  — 
"Mothers  in  Fiction"  —  Presentation  Copies  — 
Authors'  Readings  —  The  Professional  Critic — Trials 

Of  the  Literary  Life 119-147 

xi 


Contents 


CHAPTER  VI 
The  Collecting  of  the  Death  Masks— Benjamin  Franklin 

—  Robert  Burns— Charles  XII.  of  Sweden  —  Richard 
Brinsley  Sheridan— Coleridge — John  Boyle  O'Reilly 

— Napoleon 148-166 

CHAPTER  VII 

The  Collecting  of  the  Death  Masks  (Continued}— Henry 
Clay— Aaron  Burr— Louise  of  Prussia -Mendelssohn 

—  Beethoven  — Cromwell  —  General    Grant  —  Keats  — 
Wordsworth — Caiiova — Lawrence    Barrett—  General 
Sherman  —  Cavour  —  Leopardi  —  Tasso  —  Newton  — 

Queen  Elizabeth— Shakespeare— Walter  Scott         167-197 

CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Collecting  of  the  Death  Masks  (Concluded}  —  Dean 
Swift — Franklin — George  Washington  — Robespierre 
— Marat — Mirabeau  —  Edmund  Keane  — Thackeray — 
Celia  Thaxter — Lord  Brougham — Laurence  Sterne — 
Lincoln  and  Booth — Walt  Whitman— Liszt— Process 
of  Taking  a  Life  or  Death  Mask— Casts  of  Hands  That 
Have  Done  Things  ......  198-229 

CHAPTER  IX 

Obituary  Notices — Professional  Readers— Demands  upon 
Authors —The  Duties  of  Editors — The  Mistakes  of 
Compositors 230-260 

CHAPTER  X 

The  American  Actor  Series — Literary  Landmarks  of  Lon 
don — Colley  Cibber — The  Grave  of  Charles  Lamb- 
Joanna  Baillie— Butler — Boswell — The  False  Making 
of  History— Comparative  Rates  Paid  to  Authors  and 
Illustrators— Literary  Landmarks  of  Edinburgh— -Sir 
Walter  Scott— Dr.  John  Brown  ....  261-288 

CHAPTER  XI 

The  Collectors  of  Autographs  —  Begging  Letters  —  The 
Conscientious  Collector  and  the  Pirate — A  Dickens 
Pilgrimage — Mary  Anderson  t  t  289-310 


Contents 


CHAPTER  XII  PAGE 

Mary  Anderson  in  London— Dean  Stanley— Westminster 
Abbey  and  the  Izaak  Walton  Tablet  —  Stratford- 
ou-Avon  —  William  Winter  —  William  Black  —  The 
Kinsmen  ........  311-329 

CHAPTER  XIII 

Alma  Tadema  —  George  du  Maurier — Charles  Reade  — 
George  Eliot — Swinburne — Joaquin  Miller  in  Eng 
land — Locker-Lampson— John  Fiske— James  Russell 
Lowell 330-367 

CHAPTER  XIV 

Longfellow— Emerson — Whittier— Celia  Thaxter— Louisa 
M.  Alcott  —  Kate  Field  —  Helen  Keller  —  Charles 
Dudley  Warner  —  Certain  Treasures  —  Thackeray 
Drawing  of  Thackeray  —  Fitz-Gerald  Book-Plate  — 
Signatures  with  the  Hat  — The  Names  of  Literary 
Men— Bret  Harte 368-410 

CHAPTER  XV 

Authors  Club  —  Kipling— Tile  Club  —  Vedder  —  Henry 
James — Mark  Twain  and  Cable— Mark  Twain's  Story 
of  Mrs.  Stowe  —  Mark  Twain  and  Corbett  —  Stock 
ton  —  Stoddard  —  George  William  Curtis  —  Thomas 
B.  Reed— H.  C.  Bunner 4U~447 

Index    ,,,........    449 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

LAURENCE  HUTTON      .  Frontispiece 

From  the  painting  by  Dora  Wheeler  Keith. 

SILHOUETTE  OF  MARK  TWAIN 6 

BROOCH  PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN  HUTTON,  FATHER  OF  LAU 
RENCE  HUTTON 20 

THE  DICKENS  PLAY-BILL 36 

CHARGES  DICKENS 40 

PEEP  o'  DAY.    LAURENCE  BUTTON'S  HOME  IN  PRINCE 
TON,  NEW  JERSEY 44 

THE  PEEP  o'  DAY  LIBRARY  IN  PRINCETON      ...      54 
FACSIMILE  OF  THE  BOOTH  AND  BARRETT  PAGE  IN  THE 

HUTTON  GUEST-BOOK 70 

EDWIN  BOOTH 74 

POSTER  PORTRAIT  OF  J.  WILKES  BOOTH         ...      84 

ORIGINAL  "PLAYERS"  ON  YACHT 86 

MRS.  G.  H.  GILBERT 96 

LAWRENCE  BARRETT 96 

WALLACK  AND  IRVING  PAGE  IN  THE  HUTTON  GUEST- 
BOOK      .........       .       .       .       .106 

SIGNATURES  ON  THE   BACK   OF   A  KINSMEN   MENU. 

IRVING'S  BREAKFAST  TO  BOOTH        .       .       .       .114 

LAURENCE  HUTTON  IN  THE  "MAIL"  DAYS   .       .       .120 

THE  MAISTER  OF  "BALDUTHO" 126 

HENRY  KINGSLEY 126 

EDWIN  BOOTH,  DEATH  MASK 212 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN,  DEATH  MASK 212 

WALTER  SCOTT,  DEATH  MASK  .       .    ,:  .       .       .       .212 


xvi  HUustrations 


PAGE 

CAST  OF  HELEN  KELLER'S  HAND 226 

CAST  OF  THACKERAY'S  HAND 226 

CAST  OF  STEVENSON'S  HAND 226 

LAURENCE  BUTTON'S  BOOK-PLATE 258 

FRANCIS  DAVID  MILLET,  BY  SAINT-GAUDENS         .       .  278 
PEEP  o'  DAY,  THE  HUTTON  HOMESTEAD  AT  ST.  AN 
DREWS,  SCOTLAND 282 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT,  DRAWN  FROM  LIFE  BY  GILBERT 

STEWART  NEWTON 286 

A  PAGE  FROM  THE  HUTTON  GUEST-BOOK  ....  290 

A  PAGE  FROM  THE  HUTTON  GUEST-BOOK  ....  292 

DRAWING  BY  FREDERICK  BARNARD 296 

OLIVER  HERFORD'S  DRAWING  IN  LAURENCE  HUTTON'S 

COPY  OF  "THE JINGLE  BOOK" 298 

A  MARK  TWAIN  LETTER 300 

LETTER  FROM  SAMBOURNE  TO  ABBEY       ....  304 

PART  OF  THE  ORIGINAL  MS.  OF  "  SHERIDAN'S  RIDE  "    .  306 

Attached  to  the  sheet  is  a  knot  of  horse-hair,  as  presented 
in  the  reproduction. 

MARK  TWAIN'S  PAGE  IN  THE  HUTTON  GUEST- BOOK        .  308 

MARY  ANDERSON,  WILLIAM  BLACK,  AND  Jo  ANDERSON  312 

MONOGRAM,  "I.  W.,"  IN  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY      .       .  314 

A  KINSMEN  MENU  WITH  AUTOGRAPHED  DRAWINGS       .  316 
THE  PUNCH-BOWL  COMPOSITE  DRAWING  .        .        .        .318 

WILLIAM  BLACK'S  ROOM 320 

PEN-AND-INK  SKETCH  OF  LAURENCE  HUTTON  BY  ABBEY  322 

SKETCH  OF  WILLIAM  BLACK  BY  ABBEY     ....  324 

"  ROSE  MEINIE,"  WRITTEN  BY  WILLIAM  BLACK     .       .  326 

DRAWING  BY  CALDECOTT 328 

THE  KINSMEN  "BONE" 330 

DRAWING  BY  ALMA  TADEMA 332 

AN  AUTOGRAPHED  KINSMEN  MENU  .       .        .    -  ,        .  334 

AN  AUTOGRAPHED  KINSMEN  MENU        .               «       .  338 


miuetrations 


CARICATURE  OF  CHARTS  READS 342 

JOHN  FISKE  WITH  Two  OF  His  CHILDREN        .        .       .  354 

From  a  discoloured  photograph. 

HELEN  KELLER  AND  HER  DOG       .....  384 

Copyright,  1902,  by  Emily  Stokes. 

HELEN  KELLER,  Miss  SULLIVAN,  MARK  TWAIN,  AND 

LAURENCE  HUTTON      .        .        .       .        .        .        .  398 

A  CARICATURE  OF  THACKERAY  BY  HIMSELF     .        .        .  400 

EDWARD  FITZ-GERALD 402 

THE  FITZ-GERALD  BOOK-PLATE,  DRAWN  BY  THACKERAY  404 

SILHOUETTE  OF  H.  C.  BUNNER 406 

By  courtesy  of  Keppler  &  Schwarzmann. 

"Two  GHOSTS  OF  LAST  SUMMER"— MARK  TWAIN  AND 

LAURENCE  HUTTON 406 

LETTER  BY  JEFFERSON,  SENT  WITH  A  NEW  HAT  FOR 

LAURENCE  HUTTON 408 

SIGNATURES  SENT  WITH  A  NEW  HAT  TO  LAURENCE 

HUTTON 412 

THE  TILE  CLUB  PORTRAIT  OF  EDWIN  ABBEY  .  .  .414 
PAGE  FROM  THE  HUTTON  GUEST-BOOK,  WITH  PORTRAIT 

OF  MRS.  HUTTON  BY  CARROLL  BECKWITH  .  .  422 

A  LETTER  FROM  R.  H.  STODDARD 424 

A  NOTE  FROM  CHARLES  READE 426 

INSCRIPTION  IN  BOOK  FROM  GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS  .  426 
A  PAGE  FROM  THE  HUTTON  GUEST-BOOK  .  .  .  .434 


OLD  SCOTCH   DOOR  LINTEL  IN  LIBRARY  OF  PEEP  O»  DAY 


TALKS  IN  A  LIBRARY  WITH 
LAURENCE  MUTTON 


CHAPTER  I 

Stories— Early  Days— First  Money  Earned — Mr.  Aldrich— The 
Strangeness  of  Coincident  —  The  Colonel — My  Barber — 
First  Poetical  Efforts. 

To  a  club  of  Seniors  at  Princeton,  before  I  was  con 
nected  with  the  University,  I  talked  one  night  in  the 
winter  of  1896-97,  upon  a  subject  selected  by  them;  to 
wit,  my  own  experiences  as  a  literary  man — such  as  I 
am  !  The  undergraduates  who  had  journalistic  or 
literary  aspirations — and  they  were  in  the  majority — 
wanted  to  know  how  I  began;  what  was  my  training; 
if  it  had  been  easy  or  hard;  and  what  were  the  net 
results— if  any.  No  notes  were  made;  I  simply  told 
them,  for  fifty  minutes — at  a  dollar  a  minute,  the  first 
money  I  ever  made  in  that  way,  and  the  easiest  money 
I  ever  made  in  any  wray — how  it  all  came  about.  I 
had  to  talk  concerning  myself,  a  subject  which  is  very 
pleasant  to  oneself  and  to  nobody  else;  but  if,  as  Dr. 

i 


Galfes  in  a  Xibrar$ 


Holmes  has  said,  "Autobiography  is  what  biography 
ought  to  be,"  I  do  not  see  how  I  could  talk  about  my 
self,  and,  at  the  same  time,  leave  myself  out !  One  in 
cident,  or  episode,  or  experience  has  suggested  many 
others,  until  I  feel  myself,  as  some  one  has  happily  put 
it,  in  my  anecdotage. 

I  have  often  been  asked  to  write  a  story,  but  I  do  not 
possess  the  gift  of  invention,  and  very  few  of  the  gifts 
of  expansion  and  elaboration.  All  story-telling,  I  be 
lieve,  is  founded  mainly  on  fact.  Thackeray,  and 
Scott,  and  Dickens,  and  Balzac,  and  Zola,  and  Cer 
vantes,  without  knowing  it,  and  without  meaning  it, 
have  told  in  their  stories  the  essence  of  the  stories  of 
their  own  lives.  And  I  can  only  tell  the  story  of  my 
life;  the  story  of  the  persons,  the  places,  and  the  things 
I  have  known,  and  seen,  and  done,  since  my  own  life 
began,  a  good  deal  more  than  fifty  years  ago.  The 
first  decade  and  a  half  of  it  I  described  in  the  story  of 
A  Boy  I  Knew,  which  brought  me  down  to  the  period 
of  long  trousers,  and  out  of  the  influence  of  dames' 
schools.  Now  I  am  telling  about  the  scenes  in  which 
I  have  been,  in  which  I  have  acted,  and  in  which  I 
have  been  acted  upon,  since  I  have  grown  up  to  man's 
estate.  If  I  am  a  part  of  them,  and  too  large  a  part  of 
them,  I  cannot  help  it.  And  if  I  am  my  own  hero,  and 
if  my  mother  and  my  wife  are  my  heroines,  and  if  my 
friends — lowly  and  lofty — constitute  my  dramatis  per 
sona,  I  feel  that  I  am  only  doing  what  other  story-tellers 
have  done,  and  will  always  do,  under  a  thicker  and  less 


flMots  for  Stories 


transparent  veil.  I  am  telling  the  story  of  actual  per 
sons,  of  actual  places,  and  of  actual  things,  touching  as 
impersonally  as  possible,  and  only  in  passing,  upon  the 
persons  who  are  still  in  the  flesh;  dwelling  at  greater 
length  upon  the  men  and  women  who  were  my  friends 
and  acquaintances,  but  who  are  lost  to  sight,  if  still  dear 
to  memory. 

I  never  wrote  a  story.  I  've  told  many,  but  I  could 
never  put  one  into  print.  That  is,  a  story,  a  tale,  a 
narrative.  Mr.  James  Harper  once  gave  me  two  plots, 
both  of  them  original.  But  I  could  never  do  anything 
with  them.  Here  they  are,  for  the  benefit  of  some  one 
with  the  gift  of  telling  short  stories. 

A  man  died,  in  some  country  town  familiar  to  Mr. 
Harper  or  his  father.  At  least  the  man  was  supposed 
by  his  neighbours  and  his  family — and  was  declared  by 
himself — to  have  died.  Everything  was  done  to  him 
that  is  done  to  the  rural  corpse,  when  it  was  discovered 
that  he  was  not  dead  at  all  but  in  a  trance,  and  in  due 
course  he  came  back  to  his  earthly  self  and  went  about 
his  everyday  life.  He  always  contended  that  his  soul 
had  gone  on  to  another  and  a  better  world,  where  he 
had  solved  the  infinite  and  had  had  marvellous  and 
magnificent  experiences.  What  they  were — pledged  to 
secrecy  by  somebody  with  a  capital  "S" — he  would 
never  tell.  At  last  he  consented  to  write  it  all  down 
for  posterity's  benefit,  on  a  paper  put  into  a  private 
drawer  of  his  desk,  and  not  to  be  seen  by  mortal  eye 
until  he  was  dead  indeed.  At  the  end  of  ten  years  or 


in  a  library 


so,  his  own  undoubted  end  in  this  world  came.  It  was 
no  trance  this  time.  He  was  laid  out,  and  "  sat-up" 
with,  and  the  sermon  was  preached,  and  the  bearers 
carried  him  to  the  family  plot,  seven  and  a  half  miles 
away,  and  the  last  prayer  was  said,  and  the  grave  was 
covered  over,  and  the  sods  laid,  and  then  the  mourners 
hurried  home  to  find  out  the  great  mystery.  But  while 
they  were  at  the  cemetery  the  house  had  burned  to  the 
ground,  and  everything  in  it,  including  the  desk  and 
the  private  drawer  and  the  manuscript,  and  nobody 
ever  knew  what  happened  to  the  man  who  had  been 
dead  and  then  was  alive  again. 

Mr.  Harper's  second  plot  was  more  cheerful  in  its 
ending.  A  valuable  letter  containing  a  will  or  a  deed, 
mailed  many  years  ago,  never  reached  its  destination. 
At  last  it  was  found  in  the  lining  of  an  old  mail-coach, 
and  it  was  delivered  to  the  heirs  of  the  person  to  whom  it 
was  originally  addressed,  the  person  himself  being  dead 
many  years.  The  document  seemed  to  be  of  value — 
worth  at  least  a  thousand  dollars  to  its  latest  recipients; 
and  great  hopes  were  raised  in  the  recipients'  breast:  a 
thousand  dollars  was  an  enormous  sum  and  meant  rest 
and  comfort  for  the  end  of  a  weary,  poverty-stricken 
life.  A  lawyer  was  employed,  deeds  were  examined, 
titles  were  searched,  no  expense  was  spared  to  prove 
what  seemed  to  be  a  just  and  legal  claim.  But  to  no 
end.  The  case  was  outlawed,  the  document  was  not 
worth  the  paper  on  which  it  was  printed  and  written, 
and  bitter  was  the  disappointment  to  all  concerned, — 


Hmerican 


until  it  was  discovered  that  the  postage  stamp  on  the 
seemingly  worthless  envelope  which  contained  it  was 
curious  and  rare,  and  the  stamp  was  finally  sold  to  an 
enthusiastic  collector  of  such  things  for  a  sum  greater 
than  the  face  value  of  the  deed  it  was  so  long  in  helping 
to  forward. 

My  own  plot  for  a  short  story  is  better  than  either 
of  Mr.  Harper's.  It  was  a  fragment  of  a  leaf  out  of 
my  own  experience.  After  a  long,  hard  journey  from 
the  north  we  came  into  the  railway  station  at  Florence, 
about  sunset,  one  November  evening.  As  we  passed 
what  we  would  call  the  baggage  car,  we  saw  lifted  from 
the  side  door,  by  the  tender  hands  of  sympathetic  por 
ters  and  engine  drivers,  a  mite  of  a  boy  frightfully  pale 
and  weak,  eagerly  anxious  for  a  familiar  face,  it  seemed 
to  us,  but  quite  alone.  He  was  braced  up  against  the 
cold,  hard  wall  of  the  station,  two  little  crutches  were 
put  under  his  arms,  and  there  he  was  left — to  be  called 
for.  And  then  we  noticed  that  one  bit  of  a  leg  was 
cut  off  at  the  knee,  and  that  he  had,  without  ques 
tion,  just  been  released  from  a  hospital  somewhere  out 
of  the  town.  Nobody  paid  further  attention  to  him. 
He  waited  patiently,  and  he  had  no  luggage  or  other 
impedimenta  but  the  two  crutches — and  the  empty 
shoe. 

In  speaking  of  American  story-telling,  Mark  Twain 
has  often  said  that  the  manner  is  more  important  than 
the  matter.  In  the  English  stories  it  is  altogether 
different.  They  can  be  told  at  any  time  and  in  any 


in  a 


way;  but  ours  have  to  be  led  up  to  in  order  to  give  the 
desired  effect.  Sometimes  there  is  no  climax  to  Yankee 
stories  at  all,  simply  a  narration  of  facts  told  in  a 
humorous  manner — and  that  is  a  gift  which  he  has  to 
perfection. 

In  Puddnhead  Wilson,  as  first  printed  in  the  Century 
Magazine,  the  narrator  says  that  he  had  a  character  of 
a  woman  who  originally  played  an  important  part  in 
the  story,  but  who  after  a  while  seemed  to  fill  the  whole 
canvas,  and  he  wanted  to  get  rid  of  her,  so  he  remarked 
in  colloquial  English,  "she  was  drowned  in  a  well"; 
and  there  he  left  her.  Afterwards  it  struck  him  that  it 
might  be  a  good  way  to  dispose  of  all  his  characters, — 
to  drown  them  all  in  the  same  well ! 

The  only  thing  approaching  a  book  of  popular  char 
acter  which  I  have  ever  written  was  the  story  called 
A  Boy  I  Knew  and  Four  Dogs.  I  was  the  Boy,  and  the 
Dogs  were  my  own  Dogs.  It  is  absolutely  biograph 
ical,  and  autobiographical.  Every  word,  every  incident 
is  true.  It  is  not  based  upon  fact;  it  is  fact  itself. 
What  the  Dogs  did,  and  felt,  and  expressed;  where 
they  came  from;  how  they  lived;  and  how  they  died, 
in  the  domestic  circle,  was  set  down  simply  and  accur 
ately,  without  exaggeration  or  elaboration.  They  were 
good  Dogs,  and  I  knew  them,  and  I  loved  them;  as 
they  loved  and  knew  me. 

The  Boy  himself  was  not  a  bad  Boy,  and  I  knew 
him  intimately,  and  I  loved  him  too.  But,  curiously 
enough,  as  I  4<  wrote  him  up,"  he  never  seemed  to  be 


\ 


SILHOUETTE  OF  MARK  TWAIN 


a  J6o£  fl  Iknew 


myself  at  all,  but  some  other  Boy;  perhaps  the  Boy 
I  lost,  and  never  knew;  my  own  son,  into  whose 
feelings,  and  motives,  and  sentiments,  I  entered,  in  a 
peculiarly  David-and-Jonathan  way. 

The  articles  about  the  Boy  and  his  Dogs  upon 
which  the  volume  was  based  were  written  originally 
for  St.  Nicholas,  where  they  appeared,  from  month  to 
month,  in  serial  form.  And  most  pleasant  reading,  to 
me,  were  the  letters  I  received  concerning  them,  from 
the  young  subscribers  to  the  periodical.  Before  the 
closing  dog-story,  "  The  Life  and  Letters  of  Roy  Hut- 
ton"  was  printed,  one  little  girl  wrote,  from  Cam 
bridge,  Massachusetts,  to  ask  if  I  had  a  dog  then;  and 
if  so  what  was  his  name;  and  whom  did  he  look  like; 
and  would  I  tell  her  all  about  him  ?  Other  children 
wrote  to  tell  me  about  their  dogs,  and  what  they  did, 
and  how  much  they  knew.  And  apropos  of  the  Boy, 
one  little  chap,  from  a  town  in  the  interior  of  the  State 
of  New  York,  wrote  a  long,  confiding,  epistle,  declaring 
that  his  mother  was  the  eldest  of  nine  children;  that 
she  was  married  before  she  was  twenty;  that  he  was 
brought  up,  as  a  member  of  their  own  generation,  by 
his  uncles  and  aunts;  that  his  hair  was  red,  and  that 
his  nose  was  long;  that  his  aunts  and  uncles  always 
made  fun  of  his  red  hair,  and  of  his  long  nose;  that  he 
was  constantly  falling  down;  that  he  was  invariably 
dropping  things;  that  he  was  habitually  in  the  way; 
that  he  cried  when  girls  kissed  him ;  that  he  hated  to 
practise  on  the  piano,  and  to  go  to  dancing- school;  that 


8  Galfcs  in  a  library 

he,  himself,  must  be  the  Boy  I  Knew  !  And  how  did  I 
know  him  so  well  ? 

Roy  paid  for  himself — in  more  ways  than  one — and 
in  a  short  time.  His  original  cost,  as  a  puppy — bar 
gained  for  before  he  was  born — was  twenty-five  dol 
lars — cash  on  delivery.  His  tuition  and  board,  at  a 
private  institution  of  canine  learning,  added  somewhat 
to  the  expense;  but,  from  the  moment  of  his  joining 
the  family,  his  eccentricities  of  deportment  and  of  char 
acter  readily  lent  themselves  to  the  production  of  what 
is  called  "copy."  I  began  at  once  to  set  down  his 
queer  doings  and  deeds  as  he  did  them;  all  his  per 
formances  at  Onteora,  that  first  summer  of  his  exist 
ence,  were  recorded;  his  vagaries  were  noted;  his 
correspondence  was  carefully  preserved;  and,  when  the 
autumn  came,  Mrs.  Dodge,  for  St.  Nicholas,  was  good 
enough  to  give  me  an  hundred  dollars  for  his  story, 
elaborately  illustrated,  up  to  that  date.  This,  some 
three  hundred  per  centum,  surely  was  profit  enough  on 
the  investment;  even  without  the  addition  of  his  share 
of  personal  percentage  in  the  royalties  on  the  bound 
volume. 

Although  it  was  indirect,  one  of  the  most  gratifying 
of  compliments  was  paid  to  the  Dog-and-Boy-book  by 
a  perfect  stranger,  who  had  no  thought  of  its  ever 
coming  to  the  Boy's  ears.  Miss  Drisler  entered  a  New 
York  up-town  bank,  one  day,  leading  a  bright  fox 
terrier  by  a  chain;  a  busy  clerk,  pen  in  hand,  came 
from  behind  the  high  railing  and  asked,  "  Is  this  the 


Bo\>'6  jfiret  poem 


Drislers'  Grip  ?  "  He  was  told  that  it  was  the  Drislers' 
Grip,  and  what  did  he  want  with  the  Drislers'  Grip  ? 
He  replied  that  he  simply  wished  to  shake  him  by  the 
paw;  so  that  he  might  tell  his  own  boys,  at  home,  that 
he  had  met  a  friend  of  Roy  Hutton's  ! 

The  tale  of  the  Boy  was  written  at  odd  times,  and  at 
odd  places,  in  an  equally  scattering  and  disconnected 
way;  and  it  was  all  based  upon  the  discovery,  in  an 
old  desk,  of  the  Boy's  earliest  existent  "  poem,"  by 
Henrietta,  the  very  youngest  of  the  Boy's  aunts.  The 
poem,  which  is  in  the  middle  of  the  book,  was  an 
elegy  in  nine  lines,  composed  before  the  Boy  was  nine 
years  of  age,  and  its  subject  was  the  untimely  ending 
of  the  nine  lives  of  a  trio  of  young  feline  friends  of  the 
Boy,  and  of  his  Aunt  Henrietta.  And  thus  it  reads: 

Three  little  kittens  of  our  old  cat, 

Were  buried  to-day  in  this  grass  plat. 

They  came  to  their  death  in  an  old  slop-pale, 

And  after  loosing  their  breth  they  were  pulled  out  by  the  tale. 

These  three  little  kittens  have  returned  to  their  maker, 

And  were  put  in  the  grave  by 

The  Boy 

Undertaker. 

This,  naturally,  suggested  the  death  and  the  solemn 
funeral  of  the  Cranes'  Yellow  Cat  at  Red  Hook,  in  the 
early  fifties;  and  these  suggested  other  things;  and  out 
of  these  other  things  grew  a  little  volume  published  at 
a  dollar  and  twenty -five  cents  and  yielding  its  author  a 
fair  income  of  twelve  and  a  quarter  cents  a  copy-  for 


io  ZTalhs  in  a  library 

every  copy  sold,  to  this  day.  As  the  work  grew,  it 
was  read  over  and  talked  about  with  Aunt  Henrietta 
and  the  other  aunts,  and  the  other  companions  of  the 
Boy's  boyhood.  One  would  say,  "  Don't  forget  the 
little  green  orange,  on  the  back  stoop  ! ' '  Another 
would  remind  me  of  the  day  the  rough-raiders  of  the 
neighbourhood  stole  my  sled;  still  another  advised  me 
to  say  something  about  making  New  Year's  calls,  and 
the  stewing  of  the  long  nose  in  the  hot  molasses  candy. 
A  playmate  in  St.  John's  Park,  now  a  grandfather,  re 
minded  me  of  the  smoking  beans  we  smoked,  and  of 
the  running  to  fires  with  the  garden-roller.  Bob  Hen- 
dricks  recalled  the  only  fight  we  ever  had,  which  I  did 
not  want  recalled,  because  I  was  entirely  in  the  wrong. 
And  Bob's  sister  absolutely  demanded  some  account  of 
the  valentine  I  sent  to  Zillah  Crane;  because  the  valen 
tine  contained  a  plain,  solid  gold  ring,  and  was  the 
greatest  thing  Zillah  and  Bob's  sister  had  ever  seen — 
up  to  that  time.  And  so  was  evolved  the  book. 

Other  bits  of  literature,  far  more  worthy,  and  destined 
to  be  much  more  lasting,  built  up  from  the  middle  or 
from  the  very  bottom,  have  been  evolved  in  the  same 
manner.  Who  can  say  that  the  soliloquy  "  To  be,  or 
not  to  be  "  did  not  suggest  the  whole  of  Hamlet ;  or 
that  the  opening  lines  of  the  ^neid,  "Arms  and  a  Man 
I  sing,"  were  not  an  afterthought  of  Virgil's?  This  I 
know  puts  the  The  Boy  I  Knew  in  the  best  of  all  good 
company;  and  it  may  seem  very  presumptuous  indeed 
on  his  part,  But,  insignificant  as  he  is,  he  cannot  help 


Certain  Inspirations 


being  made  as  other  Boys  are  made;  no  matter  how 
great  the  other  Boys  may  prove  to  be  ! 

Mr.  John  Hay  once  told  me  that  while  listening  to  a 
somewhat  dull  sermon  from  a  preacher  with  whose 
views  and  doctrines  he  was  not  altogether  in  sympathy, 
it  suddenly  occurred  to  him,  apropos  of  something  he 
had  heard  in  the  discourse,  that  after  all,  perhaps 

Saving  a  little  child,  and  bringing  him  to  his  own, 

Is  a  derned  sight  better  business  than  loafing  'round  the  Throne. 

And  out  of  this  fragment  of  cloth  was  cut  the  Little 
Breeches  which  are  not  soon  to  wear  out  ! 

In  the  same  way,  he  added,  that  some  sentence  in  a 
long,  impromptu  prayer  gave  him  the  impression  that, 
may  be,  in  the  end, 

Christ  ain't  going  to  be  too  hard 
On  a  man  that  died  for  men. 

And  on  this  pedestal  was  erected  the  statue  of  the 
famous  '  'Jim  Bludso'  '  of  the  steamer  Prairie  Belle,  who 
gave  his  own  life  to  save  the  lives  of  the  passengers 
entrusted  to  his  charge. 

To  come  down  to  the  present,  it  is  said  —  although  I 
have  it  not  from  Mr.  Kipling  himself  —  that  the  famous 
Recessional  was  based  upon  three  words  —  "  L,est  we 
forget,"  —  which  had  impressed  its  author,  years  before, 
and  which  he  had  set  down  in  an  old  notebook,  kept 
for  such  purposes.  A  very  useful  thing  to  the  man 
who  writes  is  that  notebook.  If  we  hear  a  good  thing, 


12  Galfcs  in  a 


if  we  read  a  happy  thought,  let  us  trust  it  not  to  the 
tablets  of  our  memory  —  "  Lest  we  forget.  Lest  we 
forget  !  " 

It  may  be  remembered  that  in  the  Preface  to  this 
Dog-and-Boy  book  —  if  any  one  ever  read  the  Preface  — 
there  is  a  brief  allusion  to  the  circumstance  that  the 
indifferently  good  Boy  of  New  York  and  the  not  alto 
gether  bad  Boy  of  Portsmouth  were  very  near  neigh 
bours  as  boys,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  neither 
of  them,  now,  has  any  recollection  of  the  other  then; 
although  as  men  they  have  been  warm  and  even  in 
timate  friends  for  upwards  of  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

The  discovery  was  made  by  Mr.  Aldrich,  when  a 
view  of  the  Hudson  Street  house  of  the  Boy's  grand 
father  was  published  in  St.  Nicholas,  and  a  fragment 
of  Mr.  Aldrich's  own  boyhood's  home  appeared  as 
standing  next  door.  This,  naturally,  led  to  reminis 
cence  research  into  the  matter;  when  it  was  proven  that 
the  fathers  and  mothers  of  the  boys  had  known  each 
other  well;  and,  curiously  enough,  they  are  now  rest 
ing  almost  side  by  side  in  the  cemetery  of  Greenwood 
—  near  neighbours  once  more  ! 

While  Mr.  Aldrich  could  not  recall  the  Boy  himself, 
he  remembered  perfectly  the  Boy's  Uncle  John,  a  little 
nearer  to  his  own  age,  as  the  3'oung  Scott  who  was 
hard  of  hearing;  who  went  to  Billy  Forrest's  school; 
who  was  such  a  good  swimmer;  such  a  fast  runner  ; 
and  the  best  kite-flyer  and  the  best  top-spinner  in  the 
Fifta  Ward.  They  were  re-introduced,  one  day,  at 


little  Com  Hforicb  13 

the  end  of  almost  half  a  century,  in  the  private  office 
of  a  down-town  banking  house  in  New  York,  and  it 
was  very  delightful  to  listen  to  the  stories  of  their  re 
newed  youths.  They,  too,  had  skated  in  the  Park, 
and  had  run  to  fires,  together;  and  had  had,  jointly,  a 
private  theatre  of  their  own.  And  they  laughed  as 
they  wondered  how  they  lived  to  tell  the  tale  of 
their  habitual  manner  of  access  to  each  other's  garret- 
rooms;  which  was  by  crawling,  on  their  hands  and 
knees,  along  the  gutter,  on  the  edge  of  the  roofs,  from 
dormer-window  to  dormer-window ! 

The  Boy's  Uncle  John  was  a  constant  reader  of  the 
Atlantic,  and  it  took  a  long  shelf  to  hold  the  row  of  Mr. 
Aldrich's  works  in  his  library  at  home.  The  next 
time  he  met  his  nephew,  never  realising  who  his  old 
acquaintance  was,  he  said: 

"  And  so  that  was  little  Tom  Aldrich  !  How  did 
you  come  across  him  again  ?  I  've  lost  track  of  him 
for  many,  many  years;  and  I  never  knew  what  became 
of  him.  He  seems  prosperous  enough.  What  is  he 
doing  now  for  a  living  ?  ' ' 

I  remember,  once,  after  Lawrence  Barrett  had  been 
acting  in  Albany,  we  were  going  home  and  noticed  a 
row  of  unusually  large  street  lights  that  had  been 
placed  before  the  house  Barrett  happened  to  be  oc 
cupying. 

"  Those  must  be  Barrett's  footlights  hanging  out  to 
dry,"  observed  Aldrich,  as  we  passed. 

Of  another  friend  he  once  said  that  he  had  enough 


14  Ealhs  in  a  library 

gout  for  a  centipede.  And  yet,  to  aid  his  imagination, 
he  wrote  each  set  of  the  Marjory  Daw  letters  in  a  differ 
ent  room,  and  with  different  ink  and  pen  on  different 
paper! 

To  add  to  the  strangeness  of  coincidences  in  connec 
tion  with  the  early  association  between  these  Boys,  it 
was  revealed,  when  The  Boy  I  Knew  appeared  in  book 
form,  that  the  house  to  which  the  Aldriches  next 
moved,  just  a  block  below,  was  presented  in  one  of  the 
few  new  illustrations  added  by  the  publishers.  And 
thus,  as  Mr.  Aldrich  says,  the  author  builded  far  better 
than  he  thought;  for  the  only  topographical  pictures  in 
the  bound  book  contain  two  of  the  homes  of  one  of  the 
Boys  I  liked  best,  and  most  wished  to  emulate. 

I  never  had  the  benefit  of  a  university  education, 
with  all  that  it  means,  in  a  social  and  in  an  intellectual 
way.  I  was  too  lazy,  mentally,  to  prepare  myself.  I 
was  too  dull  in  the  matter  of  mathematics  and  the  dead 
languages  to  enter  any  seat  of  high  learning.  I  went 
for  eight  or  nine  years  to  one  school,  that  of  Dr.  James 
N.  McElligott,  of  blessed  memory  to  me  and  to  many 
an  old  boy  whom  I  meet,  now  and  then,  in  all  parts  of 
the  world.  And  I  remained  under  Dr.  McElligott  until 
I  was  about  eighteen  years  of  age.  His  was  what  he 
called  a  "  Classical  School  ";  and  the  tuition  was  dear. 
But  the  chief  study  was  English  Composition,  inter 
leaved  with  a  little  L,atin  Prose,  and  to  some  of  his 
pupils  this  last  was  always  a  stumbling  block.  Mc 
Elligott  was  the  author  of  a  very  useful  book  called 


applications  15 


The  Analytical  Manual,  of  which  he  was  justly 
proud,  but  which  is  now  altogether  obsolete  and 
neglected.  My  own  well-thumbed  copy,  in  a  green 
pasteboard  cover,  disappeared  long  ago.  But,  as  it  is 
recalled  now,  it  was  a  spelling-  and  a  definition-book 
combined;  full  of  Rules  and  Exceptions  as  to  what 
happens,  for  instance,  on  the  doubling  of  final  conson 
ants  in  radical  words,  and  in  the  addition  of  a  suffix 
beginning  with  some  particular  letter,  whose  name  or 
whose  significance  is  by  me  now  entirely  forgotten. 
There  was  a  regular  composition,  on  Fridays,  after 
recess,  the  subjects  of  which — as  "Joan  d'Arc,"  "  Is 
Childhood  the  Happiest  Period  of  Human  Life?" 
"Contentment  Better  than  Wealth,"  and  the  like— 
were  given  out  a  week  ahead.  But  every  day — Fridays 
excepted  —  before  recess,  the  boys  were  required  to 
write  a  slate-ful  of  what  were  called  "  Applications"; 
namely,  a  short  story  or  essay  upon  a  topic  of  their 
own  choosing,  in  which  were  to  be  properly  "  applied  " 
as  many  as  possible  of  the  words  of  the  morning's  les 
son.  My  own  great  effort  in  that  line,  I  remember, 
was  based  upon  words  of  from  three  to  five  syllables, 
beginning  with  the  letters  Al;  and  was  to  the  effect 
that  "An  alliterative  and  allegorical  friend  of  mine, 
who  was  an  alchemist,  dropped  his  algebra  into  an 
alembic  containing  alcohol."  Dr.  McKlligott,  as  long 
as  he  lived,  never  forgot  my  allegorical  and  alliterative 
acquaintance,  the  alchemist.  That  alchemist  was  the 
only  alchemist  I  ever  knew.  But  the  "  application" 


1  6  Galhe  in  a 


of  him,  and  of  others  of  his  kind,  has  since  served  me 
many  a  good  turn  in  the  proper  use  of  words. 

Another  excellent  exercise  devised  by  Dr.  McElli- 
gott  was  the  translation  into  English  —  word  by  word 
of  the  same  significance  —  of  certain  famous  pieces  of 
Knglish  prose  or  verse  —  such  as  Gray's  Elegy  or  an 
Oration  of  Daniel  Webster;  a  most  useful  but  often  an 
absolutely  impossible  performance  for  schoolboys,  or 
even  for  college  professors.  The  Elegy  was  his  favour 
ite  example,  and  very  queer  was  the  havoc  made  with 
it  by  McElligott's  pupils.  "  The  lowing  herds  wind 
slowly  o'er  the  lea  "  one  youth  rendered  "  The  bellow 
ing  bulls  meander  dilatorily  along  the  meadow"; 
another  gave  '  '  heavenly  conflagration  "  for  '  '  celestial 
fire'  '  ;  but  '  '  incense-breathing  morn  '  '  was  entirely  be 
yond  us  all  and  was  never  overcome. 

Still  another  of  the  good  Doctor's  admirable  methods 
of  teaching  readiness  in  composition  was  a  series  of 
efforts,  on  the  part  of  his  pupils,  at  the  writing  and 
making  of  history  in  the  form  of  '  '  reports  '  '  of  certain 
important  historical  events.  '  '  The  Taking  of  the  Bas 
tille,"  "The  Surrender  of  Cornwallis,"  "The  De 
struction  of  the  Invincible  Armada,"  "  The  Funeral  of 
Alexander  the  Great,"  "The  Inaugural  of  Washing 
ton,"  "  The  Crossing  of  the  Rubicon,"  "  The  Corona 
tion  of  Queen  Elizabeth,"  were  among  the  various 
subjects  of  which  we  had  to  treat  —  as  eye-witnesses  ! 
We  were  supposed  to  be  participants  in  these  events, 
or  onlookers,  from  any  point  of  view;  and  we  were 


of  Scbool 


required  to  set  down  our  impressions  —  in  a  certain 
number  of  words  —  as  far  as  possible  in  the  diction,  and 
with  the  literary  style,  of  the  different  periods.  We 
were  allowed  and  even  urged  to  "  cram  "  to  our  heart's 
content;  but  not  to  quote  what  we  had  read.  All 
anachronisms  were  to  be  avoided;  and  any  amount  of 
invention,  provided  it  did  not  conflict  with  possibilities, 
was  permissible.  Some  of  the  results  were  very  aston 
ishing,  but  none  of  them  were  without  interest  in  their 
way.  And  as  a  preparation  in  '  '  special  correspond 
ence,"  with  all  its  romantic  possibilities,  no  training 
could  have  been  more  useful. 

My  schooldays  came  to  an  abrupt  and  proper  end 
one  October  morning  in  the  early  sixties.  I  had  been 
particularly  lazy  and  indifferent  that  month,  and  my 
father  told  me  he  wanted  a  serious  talk.  "You  are 
getting  to  be  a  man  now,"  he  said,  "  and,  as  man  to 
man,  and  as  father  to  son,  I  want  to  ask  if  you  think 
you  are  treating  me  in  an  altogether  fair  and  honest 
way.  I  am  paying  a  great  deal  of  money  for  your 
education;  are  you  giving  me,  in  return,  a  proper 
equivalent  in  industry  and  attention  to  your  studies  ?  '  ' 
This  was  a  new,  but  a  wholesome,  idea  of  the  situation; 
and  for  the  first  time  I  realised  that  I  was  not  fulfilling 
my  pecuniary  and  my  intellectual  responsibilities;  and 
I  resolved  to  be  under  no  obligation  to  my  father,  in  a 
money  way,  from  that  hour.  I  sought,  and  found,  a 
position  as  errand-boy  —  at  a  salary  of  four  dollars 
a  week  —  in  a  large  wholesale  produce  commission 


Galhs  in  a  library 


house;  and  there  I  spent,  not  unprofitably,  except  in 
a  money  way,  another  eight  or  nine  years  of  my  life. 
My  first  duty  was  the  cleaning  out  of  the  office  spit 
toon;  my  last,  the  winding  up  of  the  affairs  of  the  firm, 
with  nothing  to  speak  of  in  pocket  and  a  good  deal  of 
experience  in  my  head,  when  it  failed  in  the  hop  trade 
in  1870. 

I  never  had  any  other  difference  or  disagreement 
with  my  father,  but  this  peculiar  pecuniary  relation 
ship  between  us  existed  as  long  as  he  lived.  I  asked 
for,  and  would  accept,  nothing  from  him  in  the  way  of 
money,  directly  or  indirectly. 

For  many  years  we  had  the  same  tailor,  a  merchant 
living  next  door  to  our  old  house  on  Hudson  Street, 
New  York,  who  had  cut  my  first  pair  of  trousers.  He 
made  a  suit  of  clothes  for  me  one  autumn,  which,  as 
was  my  inevitable  habit  then  as  now,  was  not  ordered 
until  I  had  the  cash  in  hand  to  pay  for  it.  When  it 
was  finished  I  asked  for  the  bill  and  was  told  that  the 
bill  had  been  settled  in  advance  by  my  father,  who  was 
having  an  overcoat  made  in  the  same  establishment. 
I  immediately  paid  for  his  overcoat  !  And  the  matter 
was  never  afterwards  alluded  to  by  either  of  us,  al 
though,  as  was  learned  from  other  sources,  he  was 
greatly  amused  and  pleased  at  the  transaction. 

The  four  dollars  a  week  was  made  to  go  what  now 
seems  to  have  been  a  very  long  way.  Some  fragment 
of  a  small  domestic  allowance  was  left  when  I  entered 
the  produce  trade,  and  I  accumulated  two  weeks'  salary 


SaintxBau&ens  Broocb       19 


before  it  was  necessary  to  draw  upon  my  salary  at  all. 
That  eight  dollars  —  the  first  money  I  ever  made  for 
myself  —  was  invested  in  a  sentimental  way,  in  the 
gold-setting,  as  a  finger  ring,  of  a  small,  shell-cameo 
profile  portrait  of  the  father,  cut  by  a  boy  of  about  my 
own  age,  with  whom  I  had  gone  to  school  for  a  short 
time;  with  whom  then  I  had  but  slight  acquaintance, 
but  who,  in  later  years,  has  become  my  very  good 
friend.  His  name  is  Augustus  Saint-Gaudens.  Very 
many  years  later  a  shell-cameo  brooch,  in  what  is 
called  a  shadow-frame,  had  its  place  in  the  Thirty- 
fourth  Street  house,  upon  the  piano  in  the  dining-room; 
and  one  night  at  a  large  dinner  party  at  which  were 
gathered  many  distinguished  men  and  women  to  meet 
Sir  Henry  Irving,  the  box  and  its  contents  attracted 
the  attention  of  a  guest  who  happened  to  sit  opposite 
to  it.  In  the  middle  of  the  symposium  he  jumped  up, 
grasped  the  object  in  both  hands,  and  said: 

"  I^aurence,  where  did  you  get  this,  and  who  is  it  ?  " 

"  It  's  my  father,  given  by  him  to  my  mother  on  the 
twenty-fifth  anniversary  of  their  marriage.  She  wore 
it  a  little  while,  but  it  was  too  conspicuous  as  a  per 
sonal  ornament;  and  after  his  death  she  put  it  in  that 
frame." 

The  excited  guest  exclaimed: 

"  Your  father?" 

"  Yes,  my  father." 

He  then  asked  in  great  excitement  who  did  it. 

I  replied: 


20  £alfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

"  I  don't  know.  It  was  cut  long  ago  by  a  little 
artist  in  a  studio  over  Brougham's  Lyceum,  afterwards 
Wallack's  Theatre,  on  the  corner  of  Broadway  and 
Broome  Street.  Who  he  was  or  what  his  name  was,  I 
do  not  know,  except  that  he  was  a  clever  little  French 
man." 

The  attention  of  the  whole  party  was  by  this  time 
attracted  to  the  dialogue.  Looking  at  the  cameo  in  its 
case,  and  his  hand  shaking  a  little,  the  guest  said: 

"  He  was  a  clever  little  Frenchman,  was  he,  and  you 
don't  know  his  name?  Well,  I  'm  the  clever  little 
Frenchman,  and  my  name  is  Saint- Gaudens.  It 's  the 
earliest  piece  of  my  work  extant,  and  when  you  and 
Mrs.  Hutton  get  through  with  it,  I  want  it  for  Gussie 
and  the  boy." 

And  when  we  do  get  through  with  it  they  are  to 
have  it. 

He  added  afterwards,  when  his  excitement  was  a 
little  subdued,  that  he  had  only  a  couple  of  direct 
sittings  from  the  old  gentleman;  but  had  taken  him  to 
a  shop  in  the  neighbourhood  where  he  had  had  two 
ambrotypes  made  from  which  to  finish  the  portrait. 

Then  I  went  to  the  end  of  the  room,  pulled  out  a 
table-drawer,  and  handed  him  the  two  ambrotypes  in 
question,  preserved  as  carefully  as  was  the  brooch, 
during  all  those  years. 

That  was  the  evening  when  Mr.  Sherry,  then  begin 
ning  his  career  as  a  caterer,  presented  as  a  dessert  Sir 
Henry  Irving  in  the  character  of  Becket,  most  effect- 


BROOCH  PORTRAIT  OF  JOHN  HUTTON,  FATHER  OF  LAURENCE  HUTTON 


.  Sberr^s  "Cbefeb'oeuwe"      21 


ively  moulded  in  frozen  chocolate,  strawberry,  and 
vanilla  ice-cream.  Irving  and  the  others  recognised 
the  likeness  at  once  as  an  admirable  one.  When  Mrs. 
Hutton  said  to  the  guest  of  the  evening  that  Mr. 
Sherry,  the  artist,  was  at  that  moment  in  the  butler's 
pantry  superintending  the  unveiling  of  his  chef-d'ceuvre, 
Mr.  Irving  jumped  up  at  once  without  a  word  and, 
followed  by  the  entire  party,  shook  hands  with  the 
sculptor  and  congratulated  him  on  the  great  success  of 
his  work,  asking  him  if  he  would  not  accept  "  orders  " 
to  see  the  tragedy  of  Becket  the  next  night. 

Mr.  Sherry  declined  with  thanks  and  very  politely, 
saying  that  what  he  had  done  was  purely  a  labour  of 
love  and  that  in  making  studies  for  the  statue  he  had 
spent  several  evenings  at  the  theatre. 

Miss  Terry  wanted  to  take  the  melting  figure  home 
with  her,  but  was  finally  persuaded  not  to  attempt  its 
transportation.  And  to  this  day  Sir  Henry  tells  his 
friends  in  Bngland  how  in  America  he  had  met  "  a 
pastry-cook"  who  was  too  much  of  a  gentleman  to 
accept  a  fee  ! 

Bllen  Terry  was  enthusiastic  about  Kleanor  Duse, 
and  remarked  that  she  did  very  wisely  in  acting  only 
when  she  felt  like  it,  so  that  she  always  did  herself 
justice.  I  spoke  of  how  tall  she  (Ellen  Terry)  looked 
on  the  stage.  She  said  she  was  five  feet  seven,  but 
that  she  never  stood  on  the  soles  but  always  on  the 
balls  of  her  feet,  and  sometimes  on  tiptoe.  She  added 
that  it  made  her  feel  very  much  in  the  air! 


Galfcs  in  a  library 


An  unexpected  guest  at  that  dinner  was  Mr.  Clemens. 
He  would  certainly  have  been  invited  had  his  presence 
in  the  city  been  known.  He  had  arrived  from  Hartford 
late  in  the  afternoon,  had  discovered  from  the  gossip  at 
the  Club  that  the  Huttons  were  having  "  a  rather  un 
usual  dinner-party,"  was  told  who  were  to  be  present, 
and  decided  that  it  was  too  good  a  thing  to  lose.  So 
he  dressed  hurriedly,  walked  in  without  ceremony  just 
as  the  feast  began,  drew  up  a  chair  by  the  side  of  his 
hostess,  helped  himself  to  her  oysters,  and  for  the  rest 
of  the  evening  was  the  life  of  the  party;  one  enthusiastic 
admirer  of  his  confessing,  over  the  coffee  and  the  cigars, 
that  he  would  give  half  he  possessed  if  he  were  intim 
ate  enough  with  Mark  Twain  to  have  him  drop  in  at 
his  house  in  the  same  delightfully  original  and  Mark 
Tvvaiuey  manner. 

But  to  return  to  that  earlier  time  and  the  Other 
Boys  whom  I  knew. 

One  summer  evening  I  was  sitting  with  my  father 
on  the  front  stoop  and  we  were  smoking  our  pipes  to 
gether — as  was  our  custom  as  soon  as  I  was  considered 
man  enough  to  smoke  at  all — when  there  came  up  to 
us  Mr.  Haskell,  my  father's  lawyer  and  warm  personal 
friend.  Four  youths  of  about  my  own  age  were  march 
ing  at  his  heels.  He  said: 

"  Hutton,  here  are  several  boys  of  mine  just  graduated 
from  some  of  the  colleges  among  the  inland  towns. 
They  're  absolutely  fresh  to  New  York,  beginning 
their  serious  life-work,  and  naturally  with  few  friends 


frienbebip  23 


of  their  own  generation.  I  want  Laurie  to  know  them, 
and  I  want  them  to  know  Laurie.  I  wonder  if  he 
won't  take  them  to  the  Gymnasium,  and  give  them  a 
hand  generally  in  a  social  way,  and  make  them  feel  at 
home  in  the  great  city  in  which  the  rest  of  their  years 
are  probably  to  be  spent." 

I  did  take  them  to  the  Gymnasium,  and  I  took  them 
into  my  heart,  where  they  have  had  a  warm  place  ever 
since.  It  was  the  beginning  of  a  friendship  which  to 
me  has  always  been  very  pleasant,  and  I  am  proud  that 
with  their  brains  if  not  with  their  muscle  they  have  re 
flected  credit  upon  the  man  who  put  them  in  the  way 
of  handling  Indian  clubs  and  dumb-bells  in  the  great 
metropolis.  The  first  of  these  boys  was  Francis  Lynde 
Stetson;  the  second,  Hamilton  Mabie  (both  recent 
graduates  of  Williams);  the  third  was  Horace  Russell, 
of  Dartmouth;  and  the  fourth,  Elihu  Root,  of  Hamilton. 

In  the  peculiar  financial  arrangement  between  my 
father  and  myself,  his  hospitality  with  regard  to  the 
matter  of  lodging  and  board  was  cheerfully  accepted; 
but  in  other  respects  what  Burns  calls  '  *  the  glorious 
privilege  of  being  independent"  was,  on  my  part,  as 
cheerfully  indulged  in. 

The  weekly  stipend  was  divided  into  various  portions. 
So  much  for  clothes;  so  much  for  theatre-going  —  not 
the  smallest  fraction;  so  much  for  stage-fares;  and 
seventy-five  cents  for  dinners.  This  last  amounted  to 
twelve  and  a  half  cents  —  an  impossible  sum  —  per  diem. 
On  Mondays,  Wednesdays,  and  Fridays,  twelve  cents 


ftalfcs  in  a  library 


were  spent  for  the  prandial  meal;  on  Tuesdays,  Thurs 
days,  and  Saturdays,  thirteen;  the  extra  copper  being 
invested  in  soft  brown  sugar,  spread  on  the  bread  and 
butter,  and  serving  as  dessert.  I  usually  dined  at  an 
humble  little  restaurant  on  the  corner  of  Broad  and 
Pearl  Streets,  not  Only  because  it  was  cheaper,  but  on 
account  of  the  peculiar  softness  of  the  brown  sugar. 
My  table  companions  were  cartmen,  porters,  an  occa 
sional  longshoreman  who  had  not  brought  his  dinner- 
pail,  and  errand-boys,  like  myself.  We  all  wore 
overalls  and  huckabuck  jackets,  and  we  smelt  like 
horses,  when  we  did  not  smell  like  hops.  There  were 
no  napkins,  and  nobody  ever  thought  of  tipping  the 
waiter,  who  called  most  of  us  by  our  first  names,  and 
who,  indeed,  was  the  brother-in-law  of  Tom  Bullen,  the 
second  porter,  and  an  ex-policeman.  One  member  of 
the  party  had  served  a  short  term  for  manslaughter, 
and  Mr.  Bullen,  himself,  was  credited  with  having  had 
a  hand  in  the  shooting  of  the  driver  of  an  outside-car, 
near  the  Imperial  Hotel  at  Cork.  But  they  were  all  very 
amusing,  and  the  association  did  no  harm  to  any  one. 

I  never  felt  that  my  overalls  were  very  becoming,  but 
I  was  never  ashamed  of  them;  and  when  a  young  lady, 
with  whom  I  had  danced  the  varsovienne  one  night  in 
Waverly  Place,  cut  me  dead  the  next  day  in  Broad 
Street,  because  she  saw  me  —  in  overalls  —  rolling  a 
barrel  of  beans  across  a  pair  of  '  '  skidds  "  on  to  a 
grocer's  wagon,  I  was  ashamed  of  her! 

One  of  the  earliest  and  pleasantest  friends  I  made  in 


Barber  25 


my  business  life  was  my  barber.  At  the  close  of  the 
very  first  business  day — October  22,  1862 — I  asked  a 
fellow-clerk  where  I  would  find  a  good  shop  in  which 
to  have  my  hair  cut,  wishing  to  celebrate  the  interest 
ing  and  important  event,  though  why  I  know  not,  by 
this  tonsorial  operation.  I  was  referred  to  an  establish 
ment  on  the  same  block,  entered  it,  and  of  course  took 
the  first  vacant  chair.  The  artist  chanced  to  be  a  youth 
of  about  my  own  age,  and  his  work  was  artistic  and 
eminently  satisfactory.  His  name  I  discovered  was 
11  Charley,"  and,  as  I  reached  the  stage  of  a  budding 
beard  which  I  fancied  required  shaving  two  or  three 
times  a  week,  I  always  put  my  chin  under  Charley's 
deft  and  sympathetic  razor.  It  was  a  soft  thing  for 
Charley,  and  consisted  chiefly  in  his  wiping  off,  with  a 
great  deal  of  care  and  expression,  the  lather  which  he 
had  just  put  on. 

Charley  and  I  soon  became  confidential.  I  always 
waited  for  my  * '  turn ' '  on  his  chair,  and  I  learned  that 
he  was  a  Swiss-German  who  studied  medicine  in  his 
leisure  hours,  and  was  madly  ambitious  to  become  a 
doctor.  He  talked  most  learnedly  and  wisely  on  the 
subject  nearest  to  his  heart,  and  used  professional 
terms — rightly  or  wrongly  I  know  not — which  would 
have  made  my  hair  curl  if  there  had  been  the  slightest 
disposition  to  wave  or  crink  in  its  composition.  I  also 
observed  the  curious  coincidence  that  he  had  begun 
business  on  the  same  day  that  I  had;  and  that  I  was 
his  very  first  customer  ! 


26  Galhs  in  a  library 

When  Charles,  at  a  later  period,  set  up  in  business 
for  himself  I  followed  him  to  the  new  seat  of  trade,  and 
at  the  end  of  forty-five  years  Charles  is  still  my  barber 
and  my  friend.  Every  few  weeks  I  called  upon  him, 
going  a  long  distance  and  far  out  of  my  way  for  that 
purpose,  often  neglecting  my  personal  appearance  when 
out  of  town  that  Charles,  and  Charles  only,  should 
operate  upon  my  gradually  thinning  locks,  hoping  as 
long  as  I  have  hair  to  cut  that  Charles  shall  live  to 
cut  it. 

With  Charles  I  sometimes  correspond.  He  is  inter 
ested  in  all  I  do.  He  buys  my  books,  and  he  reads 
them!  He  follows  my  career  with  interest  and  with 
pride,  he  hangs  my  picture  in  his  house,  he  is  my  guest 
at  my  own  house,  he  tells  me  of  his  joys  and  his  sor 
rows,  and  he  still  talks  medicine  and  diseases  and 
remedies. 

Charles  is  also  devoted  to  the  drama  and  its  literature. 
He  is  a  constant  theatre-goer,  but  only  to  the  higher 
class  of  plays;  and  he  is  no  mean  critic  of  the  tragedians 
of  the  city.  From  Forrest  down  through  Booth,  Bar 
rett,  McCullough,  Irving,  to  the  lesser  stars,  he  has 
derived  much  pleasure  and  profit;  declaiming  in  their 
style  some  of  the  heaviest  passages  of  Shakespeare  and 
of  the  standard  writers  of  olden  times.  And  he  tells 
me  that  his  recitations  and  imitations  find  great  favour 
in  his  social  coterie,  and  are  not  infrequently  given  in  a 
semi-public  way  at  church  and  other  entertainments. 
On  one  occasion,  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago, 


Cbarles  an&  Hnt>rew  27 

Charles  sat  in  the  upper  gallery  of  the  old  Academy  of 
Music,  listening  to  Parepa,  Wachtel,  and  Santley,  while 
I,  in  the  stalls,  was  enjoying  the  same  performance.  I 
had  left  his  hands  to  go  home  to  dress  for  the  perform 
ance,  and  he  confided  to  rne  the  next  day  that  the  whole 
pleasure  of  the  evening  was  spoiled  for  him  by  the 
professional  discovery  that  my  hair  was  not  parted 
straight. 

Associated  with  Charles  for  many  years  was  Andrew, 
a  Scottish-American  barber,  and  my  friend  as  well. 
Andrew,  too,  reads  my  books  and  cherishes  my  photo 
graph,  and  even  keeps  a  scrap-book  of  critiques  and 
paragraphs  in  which  my  name  appears;  often  saving 
me,  in  my  absence  from  the  city,  newspaper  cuttings 
containing  matters  relating  to  events  in  which  he  knows 
I  am  interested,  and  will  not  in  all  probability  be 
able  to  read  for  myself.  If  in  the  course  of  the  winter 
I  did  not  appear  at  the  shop  at  the  regular  period  once 
a  month  or  thereabouts,  Andrew,  knowing  that  I  was 
not  abroad  or  they  would  have  heard  of  it  and  afraid 
that  I  might  be  iU,  would  call  at  the  house  of  a  Sunday 
morning  to  ask  the  cause  of  my  absence.  I  never 
thought  of  leaving  the  country  without  going  in  to  say 
good-bye  to  them,  and  almost  my  earliest  visit  on  my 
arrival  at  home  was  a  social  as  well  as  a  professional 
call  upon  them. 

I  was  in  London  in  the  summer  of  1874,  when  my 
father  died  in  New  York.  Their  words  of  sympathy 
were  as  sincere  and  affectionate  on  my  return  as  any  I 


28  $aifce  in  a  OLibrar? 

received,  and  they  told  me  that  on  the  day  of  his  burial 
they  had  gone  to  the  house  with  the  rest  of  my  friends 
to  show  their  sorrow  at  my  loss,  and  respect  for  the 
dead  so  near  to  me.  It  was  only  by  chance  and  from 
others  that  I  learned  some  time  afterwards  that  on  the 
street  door  of  this  little  barber  shop,  at  the  busiest  hour 
of  the  day,  was  a  card  bearing  the  inscription:  "Closed 
on  account  of  the  death  of  Mr.  L,aurence  Hutton's 
father." 

Nothing  that  ever  happened  to  me  has  touched  me 
more  than  that  affectionate  and  affecting  tribute  of 
these  two  men, — my  friends. 

During  all  that  early  period,  naturally,  there  was 
little  time  left  for,  and  little  inclination  towards,  com 
position  or  the  improvement  of  the  mind.  I  read 
market-reports,  and,  now  and  then,  I  wrote  market  re 
ports;  but  not  much  of  anything  else,  during  business 
hours,  at  least.  I  had  all  the  advantages  of  my  father's 
well-selected  library  at  home;  but  I  did  not  stay  much 
at  home,  for,  if  Davenport  was  not  playing  in  The  Iron 
Chest  somewhere,  there  was  skating  to  do,  or  a  "party  " 
somewhere  else.  Little  besides  fiction  was  read — the 
modern  novels  which  were  talked  about — but  generally 
the  older  novels,  those  of  Dumas,  Dickens,  Hugo, 
Cooper,  Scott,  Thackeray,  Marryat,  and  Miss  Miihl- 
bach.  And  there  was  unconsciously  imbibed  from 
each  one  of  them  that  indefinable  something  which,  for 
want  of  a  better  term,  is  called  "  style."  Many  letters 
were  written  in  those  youthful  days  to  young  women 


Development  of  Style 


in  country  towns,  who  were  my  seniors  in  age.  And 
with  these  recipients  of  my  confidences  I  suppose  I  was 
having  a  series  of  mild,  epistolary  flirtations,  although 
I  did  not  know  it  at  the  time  !  But  I  did  realise,  in 
the  composition  of  those  letters,  that  they  bore  the  im 
press  of  the  manner  of  the  man  in  whose  work  of  fiction, 
or  of  popular  verse,  I  happened  at  that  moment  to  be 
absorbed,  —  the  short,  jerky  style  of  Hugo;  the  con 
fidential,  colloquial,  "that-reminds-me  "  style  of  Thack 
eray;  the  "  shiver-my-timbers  "  style  of  the  author  of 
Peter  Simple;  the  "  Lord-  keep-  my  -memory-green" 
style  of  Dickens;  or  even  the  "  proverbial-philosophical- 
a-babe-in-the-house-is-a-well-spring-of-  pleasure  "  style 
of  Tupper,  and  the  "  civilised-man-cannot-live-with- 
out-cooks  "  style  of  Owen  Meredith;  both  of  which  last, 
by  the  way,  the  young  ladies  from  the  interior  of  the 
State  admired  particularly.  I  am  not  sure  that  it  was 
the  best  school  of  style,  but  perhaps  it  was  better  than 
the  ponderosity  of  Macaulay,  or  the  bitter  dictatorial- 
ism  of  Carlyle,  neither  of  whom,  however,  were  alto 
gether  neglected. 

The  father  inquired  one  night  what  I  was  reading. 
"The  Three  Guardsmen."  "And  what  is  it  all 
about  ?  '  '  "An  historical  novel,  full  of  romance  and  in 
cident."  "  And  who  are  the  characters?  "  "  Young, 
brave,  and  brilliant  soldiers  of  fortune,  beautiful  and 
fascinating  ladies  of  quality,  kings,  queens,  princes  of 
the  blood,  lords  cardinal  and  temporal,  ministers  of 
war  and  of  finance;  and,  just  now,  a  Duke  of  Buck- 


30  ftalfce  in  a  Xibran? 

ingbam  and  one  Fenton,  who  had  murdered  the  Duke 
in  a  brutal  way."  "  But  how  much  of  it  is  history,  or 
half-history,  and  how  much  of  it  is  pure  invention, 
based  upon  nothing  in  real  life?"  was  the  further 
query.  It  had  never  occurred  to  me  to  sift  the  true 
from  the  false.  It  seemed  to  be  all  true.  That  Athos 
was  as  actual  and  as  much  alive  as  were  Mazarin  and 
Colbert,  I  never  doubted.  And  for  many  nights  there 
after — theatres  and  skating  neglected — father  and  son 
studied  out,  in  the  encyclopaedias  and  in  the  histories 
of  England  and  France,  the  whole  period  covered  by 
Dumas  in  that  wonderful  series  of  romances.  We 
learned  how  much  he  be-littled,  and  how  much  he  be- 
bigged;  how  much  he  extenuated;  how  much  he  set 
down  in  malice.  It  did  not  produce  an  historian  or  a 
biographer,  but  it  was  enjoyed  better  than  Rosedale  on 
Wallack's  stage,  or  even  than  Our  Mutual  Friend  by 
the  open  fire  of  the  study.  It  taught  me  to  dig  out  my 
own  facts,  to  verify  my  own  statements,  to  accept  no 
man's  dictum  as  true.  And,  as  a  simple  and  whole 
some  and  effective  way  of  helping  education  to  form  the 
common  mind,  it  is  here  respectfully  suggested  to  seri 
ous  students,  as  well  as  to  those  parents  and  guardians 
who  have  mental  twigs  to  bend  and  who  wish  to  incline 
the  twigs  in  the  right  direction. 

A  poetical  effort  appeared,  but  not  in  print,  during 
the  early  years  of  this  business  life.  I^ike  all  my 
efforts,  in  prose  and  in  verse,  it  is  based  upon  fact,  and 
it  is  not  impersonal.  Thus  it  reads: 


Xast  of  1bops  31 


The  Hoppist  drops 

Into  different  shops, 

Propping  the  flopping  of  hops. 

Bales,  bales,  bales, 

Of  embryo  porters  and  ales, 

Loads,  loads,  loads, 

Come  in  by  the  different  roads  ; 

Till  the  Bulls  declare 

And  rear, 

And  tear 

Their 

Hair, 

And  swear, 

The  thing  must  stop. 

For  Hop 

On  top 

Of  Hop 

Will  break  the  price  kerflop, 

Sure  pop  ! 

And  it  did! 

The  market  broke.  The  house  suspended  payment, 
and  nothing,  in  a  financial  way,  was  left  for  any  one  in 
the  establishment. 


CHAPTER  II 

First  Published  Article— Charles  Dickens's  Reading— Dickens 
as  an  Actor  in  Liverpool — Florence — Irving  as  Dombey — 
The  Younger  Dickens — An  Extraordinary  Man. 

THE  first  published  production  appeared  in  1868  in 
the  columns  of  the  Red  Hook  Journal ',  a  small,  inland, 
weekly  periodical,  with  a  very  limited  and  a  purely 
local  circulation.  The  article  was  devoted  to  a  descrip 
tive  criticism  of  the  "  Readings  of  Charles  Dickens," 
then  making  his  second  visit  to  this  country.  I  at 
tended  the  entire  series,  enormously  interested  in  the 
man  and  in  the  expression  of  his  conceptions  of  his 
own  works.  I  had  devoured  his  stories;  his  people 
were  mine  own  people;  his  characters  were  my  intimate 
friends.  I  knew  them,  of  course,  by  sight  and  by 
sound.  I  had  walked  with  them,  I  had  talked  with 
them,  I  had  laughed  and  I  had  cried  with  them,  ever 
since  I  could  read.  I  knew  every  turn  of  their 
thoughts,  every  expression  of  their  faces,  every  tone 
of  their  voices,  every  incident  of  their  lives.  And,  lo! 
when  Dickens  himself  presented  them  to  me  they  were 
not  my  Toots,  not  my  Ham  Peggotty,  not  my  Tiny 
Tim  at  all !  Yet  Dickens  must  have  known  them  better 
than  I  did.  But,  thanks  to  Dickens,  they  were  all  lost 

32 


SDicfcens  article  33 


in  the  crowds  at  Steinway  Hall.  And  they  have  never 
altogether  been  recovered. 

This  was  the  burden  of  the  earliest  printed  work  of  the 
'prentice  hand;  and  it  is  not  much  worse  than  anything 
that  has  been  attempted  since.  It  was  cruelly  treated 
by  proof-reader  and  type-setter  and  editor,  as  represented 
in  the  single  individual  upon  the  journal's  staff  ;  it  was 
signed  "  Silas  Wegg  "  —  I  do  not  know  why  —  and  it  at 
tracted  no  attention  whatever;  not  even  in  Red  Hook. 
Still  it  was  a  new  and  an  original  view  of  a  subject  to 
which,  at  that  period,  columns  of  newspaper  writing 
were  devoted,  all  over  the  country.  No  doubt  thousands 
of  listeners  were  affected  in  the  same  way;  but  nobody 
else  seems  to  have  taken  it  so  much  to  heart. 

Curiously  enough,  the  effort  did  not  turn  my  head 
or  fill  me  with  ambition.  I  still  paid  strict  attention  to 
Hops;  and  my  serious  attack  of  what  is  known  as 
*  '  I/iteraturitis  '  '  did  not  develop  at  once.  I  had 
sipped  from  the  intoxicating  bowl  called  "Appearance- 
in-print,"  and  I  did  not  thirst  for  more;  nor  was  there 
made  any  attempt  to  sip  again  from  the  Pierean  Spring 
for  a  long  time.  But,  when  the  habit  was  acquired,  it 
must  be  confessed  that  the  draughts  were  deep.  A 
single  copy  of  this  "  Dickens  "  article  still  exists,  buried 
in  an  old  scrap-book  of  its  author's;  and,  as  giving  a 
contemporaneous  picture  of  the  man  and  of  his  idea  of 
his  own  characters,  it  may  be  of  some  little  interest  at 
the  end  of  all  these  years. 

As  recorded  at  that  time  Dickens'  s  voice  was  low, 

3 


34  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar$ 

husky,  and  monotonous.  Sitting  in  the  centre  of  the 
hall,  I  closely  watched  his  face,  with  a  powerful  opera- 
glass,  and  if  I  had  not  been  perfectly  familiar  with  his 
text  I  would  hardly  have  understood  him.  Indeed, 
those  who  sat  in  the  rear  of  the  room  had  much  diffi 
culty  in  distinguishing  what  he  said.  What  is  known 
as  the  "  rising  inflection  "  was  marked,  and  very  pain 
fully  marked,  to  American  ears.  The  anticipation  in 
my  own  case  was  high.  The  reputation  as  a  reader 
which  he  brought  from  England  was  very  great.  The 
man  was  loved  by  me  for  the  good  he  had  done  and  for 
the  countless  happy  hours,  perhaps  the  happiest  of  my 
life,  spent  in  the  society  of  Agnes  and  of  Betsy  Trot- 
wood,  of  Esther  and  of  little  Miss  Flite,  of  his  good 
Tom  Pinch  and  of  his  jolly  Mark  Tapley,  of  his  Dick 
Swiveller  and  of  the  Marchioness,  of  his  Wellers,  Tony 
and  Sam,  of  his  Florence  Dombey  and  little  Paul,  of 
his  Pip  and  Joe  Gargery,  of  his  Dot  and  his  Jennie 
Wren,  and  of  hosts  of  others.  And  I  felt  that  I  would 
rather  see  the  man  himself,  hear  his  voice,  take  him  by 
the  hand  and  call  him  friend,  than  almost  any  man 
then  living.  Having  all  this  sentiment  of  enthusiasm 
and  of  hero-worship,  I  could  not  confess,  as  I  heard 
him  for  the  first  or  the  second  or  for  even  the  tenth 
time,  that  his  reading  was  satisfactory.  The  experience 
was  not  regretted  then,  nor  is  it  regretted  now.  I 
would  not  have  missed  hearing  him  for  any  considera 
tion  that  could  have  been  offered.  But  for  all  that  the 
disappointment  was  keen. 


IDicfcene  as  an  actor  35 

There  were  then,  and  there  are  now,  many  students 
of  his  works,  professional  readers  and  persons  who 
make  no  pretension  to  reading,  who  could  have  done, 
and  could  do,  to  Charles  Dickens  far  more  justice  than 
he  did  to  himself.  That  he  was  a  great  actor,  there  is 
no  doubt;  that  in  light  comedy  he  was  very  fine  is  well 
known  to  one  who  once  had  the  rare  good  fortune  to 
see  him  in  amateur  theatricals  in  Liverpool,  when  he 
delighted  an  immense  audience. 

It  was  in  the  autumn  of  1852,  I  remember,  that  we 
were  forced  to  spend  a  night  in  Liverpool,  the  father 
and  the  mother  and  I,  on  our  way  from  St.  Andrews  to 
New  York.  I  was  then  nine  years  old;  there  was  to 
be  an  amateur  dramatic  performance  in  the  town  that 
evening;  and  the  father  said — I  can  hear  him  now — 

"  I  '11  take  the  boy  to  the  entertainment  at  Parlia 
ment  Hall.  In  fifty  years  he  will  be  able  to  boast  of 
having  seen  Dickens  on  the  stage." 

And  I  have  never  forgotten  that  performance.  The 
plays — Charles  XII.,  Used  Up,  and  Mr.  Nightengale's 
Diary — were  nothing  to  me;  but  Dickens  was  David 
Copperfield  himself  and  I  had  watched  the  real  David 
Copperfield  in  the  flesh  doing  things  ! 

At  the  end  of  the  fifty  years,  almost  to  a  day,  the  old 
play-bill,  overlooked,  but  in  perfect  state  of  preserva 
tion,  was  found  in  an  old  portfolio. 

It  was  during  one  of  the  provincial  journeys  of  the 
amateur  company  of  the  Guild  of  Literature  and  Art, 
and  upon  the  programme  is  the  announcement  that  the 


36  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

object  of  the  Society  (evidently  in  Dickens's  own  words 
because  it  sounded  Dickensy]  was  "  to  encourage  Life 
Assurance  and  other  provident  habits  among  authors 
and  artists;  to  render  such  assistance  to  both  as  shall 
never  compromise  their  independence;  and  to  found  an 
institution  where  honourable  rest  from  arduous  labour 
shall  still  be  associated  with  the  discharge  of  congenial 
duties." 

Among  the  names  of  the  cast  were  those  of  Charles 
Dickens,  John  Tennell,  Mark  Lemon,  Augustus  Egg, 
Wilkie  Collins,  Henry  Compton,  Frank  Stone,  Peter 
Cunningham,  Mrs.  Henry  Compton,  and  Miss  Fanny 
Young.  The  scenery  was  painted  by  Mr.  Pitt,  by 
Clarkson  Stanfield,  and  by  Mr.  Louis  Haghe.  The 
whole  was  produced  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Charles 
Dickens. 

A  year  or  two  later  I  was  taken  by  my  father  under 
similar  circumstances  in  Manchester,  to  see  Florence, 
the  American  comedian,  with  an  English  stock  com 
pany,  play  Captain  Cuttle  in  a  dramatisation  of  Dombey 
and  Son. 

At  the  time  of  Florence's  death,  speaking  of  his  ex 
traordinary  versatility  as  a  man  who  could  play  well 
more  parts  of  great  variety  than  any  other  member  of 
his  profession,  I  recalled  this  performance  and  added 
that  even  to  this  day  the  most  delightful  and  memora 
ble  feature  was  the  acting  of  the  part  of  Mr.  Dombey. 
Since  that  time  I  have  seen  almost  every  dramatisation 
of  the  novels  of  Dickens,  from  Jefferson's  Caleb  Plum- 


Philharmonic  flail,  Liverpool. 

On  FRIDAY  EVENING,  SEPTEMBER  3rd,  1862, 
^  THE    AMATEUR    COMPANY 

iniBflFMTEMTDREORT; 


uvi.ii-nf  Hiihil,  imifiit;   Vil 

111.  -It     Hull-p.-M>l>  -IKV        lltl.l 


(THIS    BEIMG    THEIR"  LAST    NIGHT 


USED  UP. 

4m  CiiAKi.r»  C<n.i>-r»it*K,  lUui.  .  Mr,     (J  H  A  II  I.  K  S     J)  1  C  K  K  N  i. 


H,,  <;,»ce  ti,     :  ,;       '  ;    .'      Urt)  r          FW**-  *l       .       w     i       •..,!..<• 
uii,,  wn  :,  ,,-,  -in-  ,.  ,  >--:  . -•    i  IU-II.K  vi   :i::.  PUI i.. 

Aftar  which.  t)i.i  Hi.Mru-,,1   llnium,  in  Ti\,.    VIA,  l>y  ,1.   R    I'LAM'HI      L:«|     t-«ll.-<l 

CHARLES  XII. 


I>|,  OUK, 
RKIUU.I, 

i  DE  MEKVS 


JUUR  ViBUBBo,        (undo-  iA«  a«ju«vJ 
otU  BROCK,  i<i  Wealthy  I'arnen 


FRANK    STONE,    A.R.A. 

COE, 

\-l:  1'Kli     Cl'KSI.NOHAM, 

JoH-X     TKNNIEL. 


A  I  (ii:  ST  I  S     K  U  G,    A.K.A 
F.     \V,     Tnl'HAM. 
W  I  L  K  1 E     COLLINS. 

(Piugtar  qf  roninyj  ._  .  Mias    FANNY    YOUNG. 

(2)a»j)U<r  «/  AiU«,  11  rack)  .'  .  Mrs.     H  E  N  R  Y    C  O  M  P  T  0  N 

SCENERY. 

Public  Ctround  Hid  Inn,  Mr.  TKI.KIN. 

A  Room  in  a  Village  Inn,          -  .  .  .  M     PITT. 

Parlour  at  Adain  IW-k's,  -  -  .  -  M      PITT. 

TlMjfiNBputl «( Btnbu&l,  -  M  .  THOMAS  OUli-.YL 

Old  T«p««tn  Cliamb.-r,  .  .  M  .  LOCIS  H.V.Hiv 

Another  Ghaiabrr,  '     .  .  .  M      PITT. 

Hall  of  Audi,  !„•,•.  .  .     '  M.  PITT. 

To  conclude  with,  Uwctiiy-UnrJ  HIM,    ;m  ..n-iiml  F«n»,   in  One  Act, k)  Mr.  CHARLKS  Dli  KKNS 
ami  Mr.  MARK   LI«(iN,  ,.nutl,.l 

MR.  NIGHTINGALE'S  DIARY. 

NiyimxOALK,-  Mr      FRANK    STONE,    A.R.A. 

Mr.     CHARLES     DICKENS. 


Mr  TI..U.K.       '(IncmM  uf  ihf  .;lebratf.l  f- .,,.    ..,,;'  .  Mi.     M.A  R  K     LEMON. 

A    Vi«TU..t>    Y.JI::,,,    I'KU^.V    ui    nil.    ComDBMCI  «       MARIA"    I 
LrriiEK!..         \Landkirdufthe    "  It  \d,r  I M  ) 


The  PIOKVI,;  ,in  t  v  M:-  CKAC5      F!,'   T;it-.:'!y  coDutrUt,tfd  by  Mr.  SLOMAJ4,  Mac!iiui»t  of  tho  BoyaJ  Ly(;Dam  TUuatre. 
Tiip  PrepertlM  and  A|i|»mlj,i«nU  b;  Mr.  G.  FOSTER.  The  Oulumes  by  Meum.  NATHAN,  of  Titdibawnr 

P.'rmquior,  Mr.  WILSON  Pionptei-.  Mr.  COK. 

tKT  THhi  WHD14   I'flODC'CKD   I'tiDUR  'I  HK    UJKKOT1OA  OK  MR  CUAJILKSJ  l»lCK>.Nh. 


,..(««  .1  Si».,fl.,.l.    T..f..m. »l,v..',h  S.>,n..Vt.*l.  >l..-i.  ti,.- » !,„!,•  .,1  il.c  n.,.|,,-,,...  .„,    ,«u,u-uUrlj  l-comt 

Tickets  to  IK  M  j  at  the  Offices  of  the  PhiUuunouc  S-.cifty,  Exdiauge  Court.    Stall,  i  in  thu  Body  of  tl.o  Hair,  and  I 

Calory  SUlij,  5».  M.;  Oallalj  Boats,  3b.  t'.l.  • 
KMKAM'K  TU  ALL  PARTS  OK  T1IK  HALL   |-'Ui>M    llol'l-:  SIUKI-.T. 


THE  DICKENS  PLAY-BILL 


as  2>ombep  37 


mer  and  Fawcett  Roe's  Micawber  to  certain  little  Emilys 
and  Uriah  Keeps,  but  not  one  of  them  had  ever  entered 
so  completely  and  so  admirably  into  the  spirit  of  the 
part  as  did  the  evidently  young  man  who  had  walked 
the  stage  as  Dombey  and  whose  name  was  to  me  quite 
forgotten  if  ever  known.  He  looked  Dombey,  he  spoke 
Dombey,  he  was  Dombey  himself  !  Here  I  was  inter 
rupted  by  one  of  my  hearers,  who  said  : 

"  Come,  now,  old  fellow,  that  won't  do.  That  bit 
of  flattery  is  altogether  too  invidious  and  too  apparent. 
It  was  almost  my  first  appearance  on  the  stage  in  any 
thing  like  an  important  part,  and  so  far  as  I  can  re 
member  it  was  before  I  had  taken  the  name  of  —  Henry 
Irving!" 

This  is,  perhaps,  the  reason  why  Sir  Henry,  at  a 
large  banquet  at  Delmonico's,  of  which  he  was  the 
guest,  poured  some  very  apparent  flattery  upon  me 
when  he  spoke  of  me  as  not  only  one  of  his  best,  but  as 
his  very  oldest,  friend  in  America. 

With  the  elder  Dickens  I  was  never  brought  into  per 
sonal  contact.  Of  the  younger  Dickens  —  Charles  —  I 
saw  a  good  deal.  We  sat  next  each  other  at  the  Ra 
belais  Club  dinner  in  London  one  night,  talking  freely, 
as  is  the  way  of  men  of  the  same  guild  when  together. 
I  knew  who  he  was,  but  he  had  no  idea  of  my  identity. 
He  was  very  much  impressed  when  I  told  him  that  I 
had  discovered  that  his  father  had  made,  in  Bleak 
House,  a  curious  error,  particularly  curious  for  Charles 
Dickens  who  was  usually  so  accurate.  That  he  had 


38  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrarp 

put  Mr.  Nemo,  the  lover  of  Lady  Deadlock  and  the 
father  of  Ksther,  in  a  graveyard  belonging  to  a  parish  in 
which  he  had  not  died, — something  impossible  under  the 
strict  rules  of  the  London  churches.  No  Poor  Board 
ever  accepted  the  ashes  of  a  man  for  whose  interment 
at  their  own  expense  they  were  not  responsible.  Mr. 
Nemo  died  in  the  parish  of  St.  Dunstan's  and  he  was 
buried  by  the  parish  of  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden. 
The  younger  Dickens  turned  to  me,  and  said: 
"You  wonderful  Americans!  You  seem  to  know 
more  about  London  and  certainly  more  about  my 
father's  works,  than  do  all  the  Londoners  put  together. 
That  little  matter  worried  him  for  years,  and  he  was 
always  afraid  that  his  critics  would  find  it  out;  and  for 
the  first  time  a  man  from  across  the  Atlantic  has 
dropped  upon  the  fact.  He  selected  Tom  All- Alone' s 
because  it  was  picturesque  and  because  it  fitted  into  the 
story  of  Jo's  devotion  and  the  discovery  of  Lady  Dead 
lock  clasping  the  gates.  There  was  no  possible  way  of 
doing  it  in  the  proper  parish,  so  he  had  to  carry  him  to 
the  next  one." 

An  evening  or  two  after,  the  younger  Dickens  took 
me  to  dine  at  the  ancient  Blue  Posts  Tavern  in  Cork 
Street,  Piccadilly.  It  was  on  a  Friday,  and  we  sat 
where  his  father  always  sat  on  Friday  night  when  he 
came  up  from  Gad's  Hill  to  see  Household  Words 
through  the  press.  We  had  his  regular  dinner,  the 
waiter  recognising  his  son  and  speaking  affectionately 
of  the  father.  It  seemed  to  me  that  this  brought  me 


lounger  IDicfcene          39 


peculiarly  close  to  the  man  whose  novels  had  impressed 
me  so  much  for  so  many  years. 

When  Dickens  the  younger  was  in  America,  I  enter 
tained  him  in  my  own  house,  —  him  and  his  wife  and  his 
daughter.  And  once  I  met  him  abruptly  at  the  door, 
late  one  night,  at  one  of  the  Bohemian  clubs  in  London. 
Our  acquaintance  up  to  that  time  had  been  rather 
formal,  but  he  was  so  surprised  to  see  me  in  England 
that  he  forgot  for  an  instant  that  we  were  not  intimate 
friends,  and  said: 

"Hello,  Laurence!" 

And  I  had  presence  of  mind  enough  to  reply  : 

"  How  are  you,  Charles." 

After  that  we  were  no  longer  '  '  Hutton  '  '  and  '  '  Dick 
ens"  to  each  other,  but  "Charles"  and  "Laurence" 
so  long  as  he  lived. 

As  a  reader,  however,  in  this  country  at  all  events, 
and  in  my  immature  judgment,  I  was  forced  to  set 
Charles  Dickens  the  elder  down  as  a  failure. 

Some  of  his  passages  were  admirable,  but  never  the 
pathetic  passages.  I  have  shed  more  tears  in  my  own 
room  over  the  death  of  Paul  Dombey,  before  and  since, 
than  Dickens  brought  to  my  eyes.  Of  course,  he  was 
affecting.  The  plaintive  talk  of  the  old-fashioned  child 
to  Florence  and  Mrs.  Pipchin,  his  "please  tell  papa 
that  I  am  better  to-day,"  were  certainly  touching;  his 
trying  in  vain  to  press  back  the  tide  which  seemed  to 
be  bearing  him  away  to  the  sea;  his  kind  messages  on 
his  death-bed  to  all  his  friends;  his  recognition  of  the 


40  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

mother  he  had  never  known  as  she  stood  on  that  shin 
ing  bank;  his  last  thoughts  of  his  father;  his  great  love 
for  his  sister;  and  his  dying  there  with  his  cheek 
pressed  against  that  of  Florence,  and  his  little  hands 
clasped  in  the  attitude  of  prayer, — were  very  beautiful 
and  very  sad.  There  was,  perhaps,  not  a  dry  eye  in 
the  room.  But  it  was  the  old,  old  story  over  which 
every  eye  had  been  moistened  before.  It  was  what  he 
read,  not  how  he  read  it.  It  was  the  matter,  not  the 
manner,  which  moved  his  audience. 

Again  in  that  magnificent  tempest  scene  from  Copper- 
field — than  which  it  seems  to  me  there  is  nothing  finer 
in  the  whole  range  of  fiction, — the  picture  of  the  storm 
on  the  wild  coast,  the  sinking  of  the  doomed  ship,  the 
noble  death  of  the  self-martyred  Ham,  the  tall  figure  in 
the  red  cap,  Steerforth  lying  there  in  the  wet  sand  with 
his  head  upon  his  arm,  as  David  had  so  often  seen  him 
lie  at  school,  was  all  very  affecting  and  very  effective; 
but  it  was  the  good  words  of  the  Dickens  who  wrote 
them,  not  the  good  reading  of  the  Dickens  before  us, 
which  so  pleased  his  hearers. 

His  old  men  were  all  alike.  His  Scrooge  and  his 
Justice  Stareleigh  and  Daniel  Peggotty  and  even  his 
juvenile  Toots  were  all  the  same  in  tone  of  voice,  al 
though  the  expression  of  his  face  was  different.  His 
control  of  his  facial  organs  was  admirable,  and  this  was 
the  redeeming  point  in  the  entertainment.  But  his 
Squeers  was  Scrooge  with  one  eye.  His  John  Brodie 
was  Emily's  uncle  with  a  slightly  different  dialect. 


CHARLES  DICKENS 


Dicfcene's  Interpretations        41 

His  Betty,  the  maid  of  Bob  Sawyer's  landlady,  who 
when  wanted  was  always  found  to  be  asleep  with  her 
head  glued  to  the  kitchen  table,  was  the  best  thing  he 
did;  and  the  intense  stupidity  of  his  expression  when 
she  opened  the  door  for  Mr.  Pickwick  I  have  never  seen 
excelled  upon  the  stage.  Nevertheless  Toots  had  the 
same  expression,  and  said  "No  consequence  !  "  in  al 
most  the  same  tone  of  voice.  My  ideas  of  Toots  were 
all  upset.  Toots  as  I  had  always  known  him,  Toots  as 
he  was  portrayed  by  Tom  Johnson  and  by  Mr.  Jefferson 
on  the  stage,  was  gone  and  gone  for  ever.  The  Toots 
of  Dickens  was  entirely  different,  indescribably  differ 
ent,  and  I  cannot  even  now  reconcile  myself  to  the 
change.  It  was  a  revolution  in  a  long-standing  and 
almost  intimate  acquaintance  with  Toots  which  was 
very  dreadful  and  not  to  be  endured. 

So  it  was  with  Micawber.  Dickens' s  Micawber  was 
not  the  stage  Micawber  of  Burton  or  of  John  Brougham. 
Of  course,  Dickens  must  have  understood  his  own 
Toots  and  his  own  Micawber  better  than  the  actors  did. 
But  to  have  men  whom  one  has  known  familiarly  for 
years  shown  up  before  one  in  an  entirely  new  light  is  a 
severe  trial.  The  light  may  be  the  true  light  and  the 
better  light,  but  the  old  lights  are  to  be  preferred;  and 
Toots  and  Micawber  were  never  the  same  again .  I  was 
always  glad  he  did  not  touch  upon  Miss  Trotwood  or 
upon  Mr.  Dick  or  upon  Bunsby  or  Cuttle  or  upon  rough 
and  tough  old  Joey  Bagstock  or  upon  Pecksniff  or 
Noddy  Boffin  or  Sampson  Brass  or  Chadband  or 


42  Galfcs  in  a  library 

Bucket.  I  could  not  have  stood  any  more  upheavals 
of  old  conceptions  of  good  old  friends.  I  was  thankful , 
however,  that  he  did  not  pass  over  the  elder  Weller  in 
the  trial  scene.  His  "Put  it  down  with  a  WE,  me 
Lud,  put  it  down  with  a  WE,"  was  immense!  That 
was  Tony's  voice  indeed;  there  was  no  revolution  in 
that  case.  He  was  Mr.  Weller  himself.  He  would 
have  been  recognised  anywhere  and  under  any  circum 
stances.  But  Sam  Weller  was  another  and  a  bitter  dis 
appointment.  No  making-believe  very  hard,  after  the 
manner  of  the  Marchioness  with  the  orange  peel  and 
water,  could  help  me  to  see,  in  the  somewhat  over 
dressed,  middle-aged  gentleman  on  the  platform  of 
Steinway  Hall,  Sam  Weller  in  the  witness-box,  even 
with  the  inimitable  voice  of  his  respected  "parink" 
ringing  in  my  ears. 

Mrs.  Micawber  was  better.  Her  devotion  to  Wil- 
kins  and  her  dissertations  on  coals  and  the  corn-trade 
were  admirably  well  done;  as  was  the  croaking  of  Mrs. 
Raddle,  Mrs.  Pipchin,  and  Mrs.  Chicks.  But,  as  in  the 
case  of  his  old  men,  his  old  women  were  all  the  same; 
and  he  had  the  tact  to  avoid  anything  like  the  dialogue 
between  Mrs.  Gamp  and  Mrs.  Prig. 

Perhaps  my  Great  Expectations  were  too  great.  But 
I  looked  for  a  good  reader,  at  least,  and  found  a  poor 
one.  I  thought  that  everything  which  Charles  Dick 
ens  would  do  or  say  would  be  well  said  and  well  done. 
As  he  once  remarked  of  himself  at  a  London  banquet, 
he  was  *  *  only  human,  and  very  human  at  that. ' '  He 


IDicfcens  anb  £bacfcera$         43 

was,  as  the  Tribune  said  of  him  at  that  period,  "  the 
Writer  of  Writers' '  but  he  was  not,  as  the  Tribune  con 
tinued,  "  the  Reader  of  Readers."  He  showed  me  no 
new  beauties  in  his  works  and  he  added  nothing  to  my 
enjoyment  of  them.  On  the  contrary,  he  introduced 
old  scenes  and  old  friends  in  new  shapes  of  which  I  do 
not  like  to  think.  He  killed  my  Sam  Weller  and  my 
Micawber.  All  these  years  I  have  mourned  doubly  for 
the  Ham  who  was  ' '  drownded  ' '  in  the  sea,  and  taken 
away  from  me  on  the  platform.  For  all  these  years  I 
have  been  absolutely  Toot-less. 

There  is  in  existence,  somewhere,  a  copy  of  the 
Christmas  Carol  with  the  following  inscription  in  its 
author's  handwriting:  "  To  W.  M.  Thackeray,  from 
Charles  Dickens,  whom  he  made  very  happy  once,  a 
long  way  from  home." 

One  who  has  been  made  very  happy,  very  many 
times,  at  home  and  abroad,  by  Dickens  and  by  Thack 
eray,  hardly  knows  how  to  say  how  happy  Dickens  has 
made  him  or  how  much  the  works  of  Dickens  have  in 
fluenced  his  life.  David  Copperfield  was  the  first  book 
I  ever  read;  and  nothing  in  its  way  has  ever  surpassed 
it.  The  second  book  I  read  was  Pendennis — they  ap 
peared  almost  simultaneously,  when  I  was  a  very  im 
mature  reader  indeed — and  the  young  Arthur  nearly 
rivalled  the  young  Trotwood  in  my  affections.  Divided 
in  later  years  between  my  allegiance  to  the  creator  of 
Agnes  and  my  allegiance  to  the  creator  of  Laura,  I  long 
felt  that  Thackeray  somehow  in  a  purely  personal  way 


44  ftalfce  in  a  Xibran? 

was  the  finer  character  and  the  nobler  man;  perhaps 
because  Thackeray  once  patted  my  little  red  head,  long 
before  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  behold  Dickens  in  the 
flesh;  perhaps  because  Thackeray  had  had  no  John 
Forster  to  do  him  injustice  with  the  best  of  intentions. 
But  when,  in  1891-92,  I  edited  the  Letters  of  Dickens  to 
Wilkie  Collins,  through  the  reading  and  re-reading  of 
those  familiar  notes  and  epistles  in  manuscript,  in 
galley-proof,  in  page-proof,  for  magazine  and  for  book 
form,  I  became  more  and  more  impressed  with  their 
charm  and  their  great  interest  as  literature  as  well  as 
with  the  personal  charm  and  even  with  the  personal 
worth  of  their  writer;  and  I  learned  to  like  the  man 
Dickens  better  as  I  knew  him  better;  and  began  to 
realise  that  the  world  itself  is  better  for  knowing  the 
better  side  of  a  well-known  man. 

Although  Dickens  was  emphatically  an  all-round 
man,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  made  as  a  poet  a  lasting 
impression  upon  the  critics.  Mr.  Stedman,  in  his  Vic 
torian  Poets,  says,  "  Could  Dickens  have  written  verse 
— an  art  in  which  his  experiments  were  for  the  most 
part  utter  failures — it  would  have  been  marked  by  wit 
and  pathos,  like  Hood's,  and  by  graphic  Doresque  effects 
that  have  grown  to  be  called  melodramatic."  The  first 
and  the  best  known  of  his  rhymes  has  found  a  place  in 
Mr.  Stedman' s  Anthology.  It  was  written  in  1836  or 
1837,  and  it  appeared  originally  in  the  twelfth  chapter 
of  Pickwick  and  was  called  The  Ivy  Green.  Dickens' s 
second  poem  was  written  in  the  Album  of  L,ady  Bless- 


3fame  of  3>icfeens  45 


ington,  in  July,  1843.  The  third  experiment  is  not  to 
be  found  in  F  01  'ster's  Biography.  It  was  printed  in  the 
London  Daily  News,  with  which  journal  Dickens  was 
then  connected,  on  the  i4th  of  February,  1846,  under 
the  title  of  The  Hymn  of  the  Wiltshire  Labourers. 

The  question,  "  Will  Dickens  last?  "  has  been  asked 
a  hundred  times  in  print  since  Dickens  died;  and  many 
times,  and  in  various  ways,  has  the  question  been  an 
swered.  All  men  admit  that  Sir  Charles  Grandison  has 
become  a  bore,  where  he  is  known  at  all;  that  G.  P.  R. 
James's  solitary  horseman  has  ridden  entirely  out  of  the 
sight  of  the  present-day  reader;  that  Cooper's  Indians 
and  backwoodsmen  no  longer  scalp  the  imagination  of 
the  boy  of  the  period;  that  Marry  at'  s  midshipmen  have 
been  left  alone  and  neglected  at  the  mastheads  to  which 
he  was  so  fond  of  sending  them;  that  no  one  but  the 
antiquary  in  literature  cares  now  for  Waverley  or  Rob 
Roy.  But  it  is  too  soon  yet  to  say  how  long  it  will  be 
before  Bleak  House,  will  become  an  uninhabitable  ruin, 
or  when  the  firm  of  Dombey  and  Son  will  go  out  of 
business  altogether.  Don  Quixote  is  as  vigorous  as  he 
was  three  centuries  ago.  Robinson  Crusoe,  born  in 
1719,  still  retains  all  the  freshness  of  youth;  who  can 
prophesy  how  Mr.  Samuel  Pickwick,  the  Don  Quixote 
of  1839,  will  be  regarded  in  1939,  or  how  Mr.  Samuel 
Weller,  his  man  Friday,  will  be  looked  upon  by  the 
readers  of  a  hundred  years  from  to-day  ? 

Dickens  certainly  wrote  for  his  own  time,  and  gen 
erally  of  his  own  time.  And  during  his  own  time  he 


46  £alfes  in  a  library 

achieved  a  popularity  without  parallel  in  the  history  of 
fiction.  But  the  fashions  of  all  times  change;  and  al 
though  Dickens  has  been  in  fashion  longer  than  most 
of  his  contemporaries,  and  is  still  the  fashion  among 
old-fashioned  folk,  there  are  acute  critics  who  say  that 
his  day  is  over.  The  booksellers  and  the  officials  of 
circulating  libraries  tell  a  different  story,  however;  and 
when  little  children,  who  never  heard  the  name  of 
Dickens,  who  know  nothing  of  his  great  reputation, 
turn  from  Alice  in  Wonderland  and  Little  Lord  Faun- 
tleroy  to  the  Cricket  on  the  Hearth,  loving  the  old  as 
much  as  they  love  the  new,  it  would  seem  as  if  the 
sun  had  not  yet  set  upon  Dickens  ;  and  that  the  night 
which  is  to  leave  him  in  total  darkness  is  still  far 
off. 

A  strong  argument  in  favour  of  what  may  be  called 
the  "  staying  qualities"  of  Dickens  is  the  fact  that  his 
characters,  even  in  a  mutilated,  unsatisfactory  form,  have 
held  the  stage  for  half  a  century  or  more,  and  still  have 
power  to  attract  and  move  great  audiences,  wherever 
is  spoken  the  language  in  which  he  wrote.  The  drama 
tisation  of  the  novel  is  universally  and  justly  regarded 
as  the  most  ephemeral  and  worthless  of  dramatic  pro 
ductions;  and  the  novels  of  Dickens,  on  account  of  their 
length,  of  the  great  number  of  figures  he  introduces,  of 
the  variety  and  occasional  exaggeration  of  his  dia 
logues,  and  of  his  situations,  have  been  peculiarly  diffi 
cult  of  adaptation  to  theatrical  purposes.  Nevertheless, 
the  world  laughed  and  cried  over  Micawber,  the  Mar- 


Ibumanit?  of  JDicfcens       47 


chioness,  little  Nell,  Captain  Cuttle,  Dan'l  Peggotty, 
aiid  Caleb  Plummer,  behind  the  footlights,  years  after 
Dolly  Spanker,  Aminadab  Sleek,  Timothy  Toodles, 
Alfred  Evelyn,  and  Geoffrey  Dale,  their  contemporaries 
in  the  standard  and  legitimate  drama,  created  solely 
and  particularly  for  dramatic  representation,  were  ab 
solutely  forgotten.  And  Sir  Henry  Irving,  sixty  years 
after  the  production  of  Pickwick,  drew  great  crowds  to 
see  his  Alfred  Jingle,  while  that  picturesque  and  inge 
nious  swindler,  Robert  Macaire,  Jingle's  once  famous 
and  familiar  confrere  in  plausible  rascality,  was  never 
seen  on  the  boards  except  as  he  was  burlesqued  and 
caricatured  in  comic  opera. 

It  is  pretty  safe  to  say  —  and  not  in  a  Pickwickian 
sense  —  that  Pecksniff  will  live  almost  as  long  as  hy 
pocrisy  lasts;  that  Heep  will  not  be  forgotten  while 
mock  humility  exists;  that  Mr.  Dick  will  go  down  to 
posterity  arm  in  arm  with  Charles  the  First,  whom  he 
could  not  avoid  in  his  Memorial;  that  Barkis  will  be 
quoted  until  men  cease  to  be  willin'.  And  so  long  as 
cheap,  rough  coats  cover  faith,  charity,  and  honest 
hearts,  the  world  will  remember  that  Captain  Cuttle 
and  the  Peggotty  s  were  so  clad. 

Dickens  has  been  accused  of  being  an  irreligious  man, 
and  of  exhibiting  a  lack  of  reverence  for  sacred  and 
serious  things.  His  Chadband  and  his  Stiggins  have 
been  cited  as  gross  libels  upon  the  clergymen  of  Eng 
land,  by  men  who  forget  his  Frank  Milvey,  in  Our 
Mutual  Friend,  and  who  pay  no  heed  to  the  fact  that 


48  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrarp 

he  rated  severely  whatever  was  bad  and  reprehensible 
in  the  members  of  every  profession.  Stiggins  and 
Chadband  are  no  worse  than  Gradgrind,  who  was  in 
the  hardware  line;  than  Pecksniff,  who  was  an  archi 
tect;  than  Ralph  Nickleby,  who  was  a  money-broker; 
or  than  Tackleton,  who  was  a  maker  of  toys. 

Dickens  was  not  a  church  member,  or  what  is  called 
an  Orthodox  Christian;  but  he  preached  many  a  good 
sermon  for  all  that;  and  his  text  was  the  Golden  Rule, 
in  all  its  various  readings.  In  many  wholesome,  rev 
erent  ways  does  the  Bible  figure  throughout  his  pages. 
One  of  the  earliest  recollections  of  David  Copperfield 
was  the  story  of  the  raising  of  L/azarus,  as  it  was  read 
to  him  and  Peggotty  by  his  mother  one  Sunday  even 
ing,  lyittle  Nell  used  to  take  her  Bible  with  her  to  read 
in  the  quiet,  lovely  retreat  of  the  old  church.  "  I  ain't 
much  of  a  hand  at  reading  'writing-hand,'  "  said  Betty 
Higden,  "though  I  can  read  my  Bible  and  most  print "; 
Oliver  Twist  read  the  Bible  to  Mrs.  Maylie  and  Rose 
Fleming;  Pip  read  the  Bible  to  and  prayed  with  the 
convict  under  sentence  of  death;  Scrooge  heard  Tiny 
Tim  say,  "And  He  called  a  little  child  to  Him,  and  set 
him  in  the  midst " ;  and  when  Jo  was  on  his  death-bed, 
Allen  Woodcourt  asked  him: 

"  '  Did  you  ever  know  a  prayer,  Jo  ? ' 

"  '  Never  knowed  nothink,  sir.' 

"  *  Not  so  much  as  one  short  prayer? ' 

"  '  No,  sir,  nothink  at  all.' 

"  '  Jo,  can  you  say  what  I  say  ? ' 


flbeas  of  Beatb  49 

"  '  I  '11  say  anythink  as  you  say,  sir,  for  I  know  it 's 
good.' 

"  '  OUR  FATHER'— 

"  '  Our  father!— yes,  that  's  werry  good,  sir.' 

"  *  WHICH  ART  IN  HEAVEN' — 

'  *  '  Art  in  Heaven — is  the  light  a-coming,  sir  ?  * 

"  '  It  is  close  at  hand.     HAI^OWED  BK  THY  NAME  ! ' 

"  '  Hallowed  be— thy— ' 

"  The  light  is  come  upon  the  dark,  benighted  way! 
Dead!  .  .  .  And  dying  thus  around  us  every 
day." 

Upon  the  morning  of  the  day  on  which  the  mortal 
part  of  Dickens  was  laid  to  rest  in  the  Poets'  Corner  of 
Westminster  Abbey,  June  14,  1870,  I  printed  in  the 
New  York  Tribune  the  following  words  of  Dickens, 
taken  almost  at  random  from  his  works.  They  give 
his  idea  of  Death,  and  they  seem  to  prove  that  he  had 
some  faith  in  a  Life  to  Come: 

"  Dead,  your  Majesty,  Dead,  my  lords  and  gentle 
men,  Dead,  Right  Reverends  and  Wrong  Reverends,  of 
every  order.  Dead,  men  and  women,  born  with 
heavenly  compassion  in  your  hearts.  And  dying  thus 
around  us  every  day." — Bleak  House,  Chap.  67. 

* '  The  golden  ripple  on  the  wall  came  back  again, 
and  nothing  else  stirred  in  the  room.  The  old,  old 
fashion,  the  fashion  that  came  in  with  our  first  gar 
ments,  and  will  last,  unchanged,  until  our  race  has  run 
its  course,  and  the  wide  firmament  is  rolled  up  like  a 
scroll.  The  old,  old  fashion— Death!  Oh,  thank  God, 


50  Galfes  in  a 


all  who  see  it,  for  that  older  fashion  yet,  of  immortality. 
And  look  upon  us,  angels  of  young  children,  with  re 
gard  not  quite  estranged,  when  the  Swift  River  bears 
us  to  the  Ocean."  —  Dombey,  Chap.  17. 

"The  spirit  of  the  child,  returning,  innocent  and 
radiant,  touched  the  old  man  with  its  hand,  and  beck 
oned  him  away."  —  Chimes,  Second  Quarter. 

"  The  Star  had  shown  him  the  way  to  find  the  God 
of  the  poor;  and  through  humility  and  sorrow  and  for 
giveness  he  had  gone  to  his  Redeemer's  rest."  —  Hard 
Times,  Book  III.,  Chap.  6. 

"  I  felt  for  my  old  self,  as  the  dead  may  feel,  if  they 
ever  revisit  these  scenes;  I  was  glad  to  be  tenderly 
remembered,  to  be  greatly  pitied,  not  to  be  quite 
forgotten."  —  Bleak  House,  Chap.  45. 

"  From  these  garish  lights  I  vanish  now  for  ever 
more  ;  with  a  heartful,  grateful,  respectful,  affectionate 
farewell,  —  and  I  pray  God  to  bless  us  every  one."  — 
lyast  Reading,  L/ondon,  March  6,  1870. 

'  '  When  I  die,  put  near  me  something  that  has  loved 
the  light,  and  had  the  sky  above  it  always."  —  Old 
Curiosity  Shop,  Chap.  71. 

"  L,ord,  keep  my  memory  green."  —  Haunted  Man, 
Chap.  3. 

"  '  Now,'  he  murmured,  '  I  am  happy.'  He  fell  into 
a  light  slumber,  and,  waking,  smiled  as  before,  then 
spoke  of  beautiful  gardens,  which,  he  said,  stretched 
out  before  him,  and  were  filled  with  figures  of  men, 
women,  and  many  children,  all  with  light  upon  their 


Un  £itraorbinan>  flban          51 

faces,  then  whispered  that  it  was  Kden — and  so  died." 
—Nickleby,  Chap.  58. 

"  .  .  .  died  like  a  child  that  had  gone  to  sleep." 
— Copperfield,  Chap.  9. 

"  .  .  .  and  began  the  world — not  this  world,  oh, 
not  this  world.  The  world  that  sets  this  right."  — 
Bleak  House,  Chap.  65. 

"  .  .  .  gone  before  the  Father;  far  beyond  the 
twilight  judgments  of  this  world,  high  above  its  inists 
and  obscurities." — Dorritt,  Book  II.,  Chap.  19. 

"  .  .  .  And  lay  at  rest.  The  solemn  stillness  was 
no  marvel  now." — Curiosity  Shop,  Chap.  71. 

"  It  being  high  water,  he  went  out  with  the  tide."  — 
Copperfield,  Chap.  30. 

I  once  met  a  man  who  was  extraordinary  in  a  rather 
extraordinary  way.  He  was  a  man  of  about  the  usual 
age, — anywhere  between  fifty  and  sixty, — and  he  did 
not  show  his  years  in  his  face,  in  his  figure,  or  in  his 
manner,  whatever  his  years  may  have  been.  He  came 
to  this  country  during  the  middle  of  the  last  decade  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  bearing  excellent  letters  of  in 
troduction  from  influential  men  of  the  British  Isles  to 
certain  literary  men  of  our  own  continent.  He  was  an 
essayist,  a  reviewer,  a  translator,  a  historian,  but  not  a 
writer  of  romance;  and  he  was  evidently  highly  re 
garded  by  his  many  friends  in  I/ondou  and  in  Edin 
burgh.  He  had  the  bearing  of  a  gentleman  and  the 
charm  of  a  scholar.  He  spoke  several  languages  be 
sides  his  own;  he  spoke  them  correctly  and  fluently; 


52  £alh$  in  a  library 

and  what  he  said  bore  always  the  stamp  of  sincerity 
and  truth.  He  was  put  up  at  the  best  of  clubs,  he 
was  met  in  the  best  of  houses.  He  never  assumed. 
He  was,  if  anything,  rather  shy  of  expressing  his  views, 
or  his  knowledge,  concerning  men  and  things.  He 
gave  no  hint  of  Miinchausenism  in  his  general  con 
versation,  and  yet  he  succeeded  once  in  almost  para 
lysing  one  man  who  was  naturally  and  proverbially 
credulous. 

We  were  looking  over  a  private  collection  of  objects 
of  various  degrees  of  art  of  more  or  less  interest  and 
value, — certainly  of  more  value  and  interest  to  their 
possessor  than  to  anybody  else, — when  we  came  upon 
an  indifferent  little  water-colour  drawing  of  Tom  All- 
Alone' s.  It  contained  the  steps  which  the  Jo  of  Bleak 
House  kept  clean,  for  the  sake  of  the  dear  friend  whom 
he  had  seen  thrown  roughly  into  a  hole  just  beyond  the 
iron  gates  at  their  top — the  steps  upon  which  the  pro 
strate  form  of  L,ady  Deadlock  was  found  after  that  long, 
weary,  heartbreaking  search  by  Esther  and  Mr.  Bucket. 

The  visitor  recognised  the  scene  at  a  glance,  and  he 
pronounced  the  sketch  correct  and  true  in  all  its  minor 
details.  He  remembered  meeting  Dickens  while  the 
story  was  appearing  in  its  original  serial  form.  He  and 
the  creator  of  Jo  and  of  Mr.  Bucket  had  been  dining 
one  evening  with  John  Forster,  in  what  had  been  Mr. 
Tulkinghorn's  chambers  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  and 
together  they  had  strolled  in  the  misty  moonlight  to 
ward  Wellington  Street  and  the  Strand,  stopping  to 


personal  IRecolIectiona          53 

look  for  a  moment  or  two  at  the  deserted,  dreary  little 
graveyard  in  Russell  Court,  just  off  Drury  I,ane,  where 
the  unfortunate  Mr.  Nemo  was  to  be  buried.  Dickens 
explained  his  great  difficulty  in  finding  the  proper 
place  for  the  interment,  because  Tom  All- Alone' s 
was  not  in  the  parish  in  which  Mr.  Nemo  was  to  die, 
and  because  the  authorities  of  one  parish  will  never  re 
ceive  the  pauper  bones  of  the  man  who  dies  in  a 
parish  adjoining. 

All  this  was  intensely  interesting  to  me,  as  the  owner 
of  the  sketch,  and  also  a  great  lover  of  Dickens,  and  it 
was  a  little  startling,  for  Dickens  himself  had  been  dead 
a  quarter  of  a  century  and  Bleak  House  was  quite  forty 
years  old.  But  still  it  might  have  happened. 

The  next  object  which  attracted  our  attention  was  an 
engraving  entitled  "  The  Last  Return  from  Duty."  It 
represented  the  old  Duke,  the  Duke,  the  hero  of  Water 
loo,  on  an  old  war-horse,  perhaps  a  veteran  of  Waterloo 
itself,  as  leaving  the  Horse  Guards  for  the  last  time, 
and  going  slowly  home,  in  his  ripe  old  age,  to  die. 
The  print  is  not  a  common  one,  and  to  the  visitor  it 
had  been  unknown.  He  stood  before  it  in  an  attitude 
of  respectful  silence  for  a  moment  or  two.  Making  a 
semi-unconscious  military  salute,  he  said:  "  It  is  very, 
very  like  the  Duke,  the  dear  old  Duke,  the  magnificent 
old  Duke,  the  "  ever-grand  old  Duke,"  as  I  remember 
him  so  well  at  Walmer  Castle,  toward  the  close  of  his 
life.  He  must  have  been  over  eighty  then,  and  his  eques 
trian  days  were  past ;  but  he  walked  about  the  grounds 


54  Galfcs  in  a  library 

unattended,  petting  the  steed  he  could  no  longer  ride, 
but  still  clear  of  mind,  erect  of  body,  quick  of  step, 
bright  of  eye,  full  of  good  talk.  It  is  very  like  him  " 

This,  too,  was  a  little  startling,  and  also  very  inter 
esting,  to  me,  who  had  a  dim  recollection  of  standing 
by  my  father's  side  as  a  small  boy,  in  1852,  at  a  window 
of  Morley's  Hotel  on  Trafalgar  Square,  and  watching 
the  body  of  the  "  ever-grand  old  Duke  "  carried  in  great 
funereal  pomp  from  Chelsea  Hospital  to  St.  Paul's  Ca 
thedral.  But  that  was  a  long  time  ago;  and  the  black- 
bearded,  unwrinkled  man  beside  me,  to  have  been  a 
friend  of  Wellington's,  must  have  been  a  good  deal  older 
than  he  looked.  But  still  it  might  have  happened. 

And  then  we  stepped  up  to  the  library  table,  upon 
which,  lying  in  state,  was  a  bronze  replica  of  Dr.  An- 
tomarchi's  death-mask  of  the  first  Napoleon.  This  of 
all  the  things  he  had  seen  was  to  the  visitor  the  most 
realistic  and  the  most  impressive.  He  had  never  heard 
of  Dr.  Antomarchi  or  of  the  death-mask.  He  inspected 
it  with  an  intense  gaze;  he  looked  at  it  from  all  sides 
and  in  all  lights.  He  asked  permission  to  take  it  in 
his  hands,  to  carry  it  to  the  window.  He  touched  it 
reverently;  he  put  it  back  in  its  place  with  a  long- 
drawn  sigh,  and  he  whispered:  "It  is  the  very  face  and 
head  of  Bonaparte  as  I  saw  him  in  the  flesh!  " 

This  was  more  than  startling.  Bonaparte  had  died 
in  St.  Helena  in  1821,  and  here  in  1895,  seventy-four 
years  later,  was  a  middle-aged  man  who  had  seen  him 
in  the  flesh  ! 


2)oubt0  of  Ms  IDeradt?          55 

The  intimacy  with  Dickens,  who  had  not  been  in  the 
flesh  for  five-and-twenty  years;  the  friendship  with 
Wellington,  who  had  been  out  of  the  flesh  for  nearly 
fifty  years,  might  both  be  accepted,  but  not  the  per 
sonal  acquaintance  with  Bonaparte,  who  had  put  off 
his  flesh  a  good  many  years  before  the  man  could  pos 
sibly  have  been  born.  So  the  man  was  steered  care 
fully  away  from  a  coloured  print  of  Garrick,  whose 
death  had  eclipsed  the  gaiety  of  nations  nearly  a  cent 
ury  before;  away  from  a  pencil  drawing  of  the  mural 
tablet  to  the  memory  of  Tom  D'Urfey  which  Sir  Rich 
ard  Steele  had  placed  on  the  walls  of  St.  James's,  Pic 
cadilly,  in  1723;  even  away  from  an  engraving  of  St. 
Jerome,  who  put  the  Bible  into  Latin  at  the  close  of  the 
fourth  century  of  the  Christian  era,  for  fear  the  man 
would  tell  tales  of  his  personal  knowledge  of  them  all. 
The  painful  story  of  the  sudden  collapse  of  Ananias 
was  recalled,  and  it  was  felt  that  it  would  be  much  more 
comfortable  for  all  concerned  if  the  present  phenomenal 
economiser  of  the  truth  might  be  permitted  to  suffer  his 
own  inevitable  collapse  in  a  public  street,  or  a  public 
conveyance,  rather  than  in  a  comparatively  humble 
private  house. 

Therefore,  gently  but  firmly,  and,  it  is  to  be  hoped, 
imperceptibly  to  himself,  the  modern  Ananias  was  con 
ducted  from  the  library  to  the  hall,  from  the  hall  to  the 
front  door.  But,  hat  in  hand,  he  paused  on  the  thres 
hold,  and  remarked  casually  that  it  had  just  occurred 
to  him  that  some  of  his  statements  might  seem  a  little 


56  Galfes  in  a  library 

surprising  to  his  listener.  This  was  acknowledged 
with  polite  hesitation,  and  the  visitor  was  permitted  to 
come  back  to  explain.  It  may  be  stated  that  the  ex 
planation  was  made  in  the  hall. 

It  seems  that  the  visitor's  family  was  connected  in 
some  way,  by  marriage,  with  the  family  of  Dickens, 
and  that  he  had,  naturally,  as  a  young  man,  seen  some 
thing  in  his  own  house  and  out  of  it  of  the  head  of  the 
Dickens  family.  That  might  have  happened. 

It  also  seems  that  the  visitor  was  the  son  of  an  officer 
who  had  served  on  Wellington's  staff  in  the  Peninsula; 
that  the  Iron  Duke  had,  in  consequence,  acted  as 
sponsor  to  the  visitor  at  his  christening,  and  that, 
spending  his  childhood  at  Sandwich,  in  Kent,  near 
Walmer  Castle,  the  official  residence  of  Wellington  as 
Warden  of  the  Five  Ports,  he  had,  as  was  natural,  no 
ticed,  and  been  noticed  by,  his  father's  old  chief.  That 
also  might  have  happened. 

Then  followed  the  most  remarkable  explanation  of 
all,  at  the  close  of  which  the  visitor  was  once  more  in 
vited  into  the  library. 

It  seems  that  while  still  a  very  youthful  person  he 
chanced  to  have  been  with  his  father  in  Paris,  in  1840, 
when,  by  order  of  I^ouis  Philippe,  the  embalmed  body 
of  Bonaparte  was  carried  to  France  to  be  entombed  in 
the  Invalides.  Out  of  pure  sentiment,  the  boy,  as  a 
godson  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  Bonaparte's  con 
queror,  was  permitted  to  be  one  of  the  very  few  favoured 
persons  who  were  present  when  the  inner  coffin  was 


1bie  {Truthfulness  57 

opened  in  order  to  identify  the  remains.     He  then  saw 
Napoleon  in  the  actual  flesh;  and  the  fact  had  made  an 
impression  upon  him,  mere  child  as  he  was,  which  he 
never  had  forgotten  and  never  could  forget. 
And  that  did  happen! 


CHAPTER  III 

Recollections  of  the  Stage  —  Plays  and  Players  —  Frederick 
Warde  —  Henry  Irving's  Generosity — Edwin  Booth  —  The 
Players  Club— Death  of  Lawrence  Barrett. 

MY  next  appearance  in  print,  after  the  Dickens 
article,  was  more  successful;  it  was  even  a  little  remun 
erative,  and  it  settled  the  whole  course  of  my  life.  I 
had  gone,  in  the  'seventies  some  time,  to  Booth's 
Theatre  to  see  the  return  of  the  Boucicaults  to  the  New 
York  stage  after  a  long  absence.  They  played  Jessie 
Brown,  or  the  Siege  of  Lucknow,  a  drama  which  had 
stirred  up  all  the  young  Scotch  blood  in  New  York  to 
a  remarkable  extent  when  it  was  originally  produced  at 
Wallack's,  in  the  early  'sixties.  Many  of  the  members 
of  the  first  cast  were  dead;  but  I  set  down,  in  a  thou 
sand  or  two  thousand  words,  all  that  could  be  remem 
bered  of  the  original  production,  and  the  article  was 
carried  to  The  Evening  Mail.  It  was  accepted  and 
printed,  and  paid  for, — at  the  rate  of  seven  dollars  a 
column.  It  was  quoted,  and  copied,  and  talked  about; 
and  the  author  was  asked  for  more  in  the  same  line. 
And  so  I  stubbed  my  toe,  as  it  were,  and  fell  into  the 
arms  of  a  daily  journal.  The  contribution  was  followed 
by  a  long,  scattering,  irregular  series  of  "  Recollections 

58 


JPoung  IPeteran  59 


of  the  Stage,"  "  By  a  Young  Veteran,"  for  which  latter 
I  was  severely  censured  on  the  ground  that  a  veteran 
must  be  a  man  old  in  years.  Which  is  not  true,  for 
there  were  veteran  drummer-boys  among  my  acquaint 
ances  then,  who  had  served  in  the  Civil  War,  who  were 
recognised  as  veterans  and  who  were  younger  than  I. 

The  subject-matter  selected  always  related  to  some 
current  play  or  event  of  dramatic  interest,  the  article 
stating  what  '  '  The  Young  Veteran  '  '  knew  or  had  seen 
or  had  read  concerning  similar  events  or  plays  in  the 
palmy  days  of  the  past.  If  The  School  for  Scandal  were 
revived,  the  story  of  the  comedy  was  told  from  the  be 
ginning:  who  wrote  it,  how,  and  when;  where  and 
when  it  was  first  produced  in  England  and  in  America; 
how  this  man  played  Joseph,  how  that  man  played 
Charles.  When  Miss  Cushman  retired,  "Last  Appear 
ances"  were  the  theme;  when  Miss  Bijou  Heron  made 
her  debut,  "First  Appearances"  were  talked  about,  and 
the  "  Infant  Phenomena";  and  when  poor  Montague 
received  his  death-stroke  upon  the  stage,  in  San  Fran 
cisco,  I  dwelt  in  a  reminiscent  way  upon  similar  trage 
dies  in  real  life. 

The  articles  were  favourably  noticed,  except  by  the 
actors  and  actresses  who  were  not  themselves  noticed; 
and  among  the  personal  letters  *  '  The  Young  Veteran  '  ' 
received  upon  the  subject  of  reprinting  them  in  book- 
form  was  one  signed  by  J.  Brander  Matthews,  who 
then  had  never  heard  "The  Young  Veteran's"  real 
name,  although  it  has  had  a  familiar,  and  I  am  sure  not 


6o  Galfts  in  a  library 

an  unpleasant,  sound  in  his  ears  for  more  than  a  quarter 
of  a  century  since.  The  book  was  printed  at  the  au 
thor's  expense;  the  edition  was  limited  to  five  hundred 
copies,  all  of  which  were  sold.  And  the  author  lost 
nothing  in  cash  and  not  much  in  reputation  by  the 
transaction.  The  title  of  the  work  is  Plays  and  Play 
ers,  and  rather  entertaining  is  the  confusion  the  name 
caused  in  the  mind  of  a  Scottish  clergyman  who 
wrote  that  he  was  glad  to  think  that  his  young  friend 
had  turned  his  thoughts  from  the  affairs  of  the  theatre 
to  more  serious  things;  and  that  he  hoped  soon  to  be 
able  to  read  the  new  book  on  Praise  and  Prayer  ! 

This  work  of  my  'prentice  hand  was  published  in 
1875  in  a  limited  edition.  For  twenty-five  years  after 
wards  it  was  out  of  print,  turning  up  only  occasionally 
in  the  sales  of  collections  of  dramatica.  I  had  searched 
in  vain  during  quite  a  decade  for  a  copy  of  the  book, 
which  I  wanted  for  some  especial  purpose.  I  had 
orders  in  the  hands  of  dealers  all  over  the  country  and 
had  even  advertised  for  it,  when  I  received  a  rather  per 
emptory  letter  from  a  binder  saying  that  he  had  in  his 
cellar  a  number  of  copies  of  the  work  in  question  which 
would  be  destroyed,  as  was  the  rule  of  the  house,  if 
they  were  not  taken  away  immediately.  And  now  I 
am  overloaded  with  a  book,  a  specimen  of  which  for 
over  a  quarter  of  a  century  I  could  not  buy  at  any 
price.  These  cost  me  nothing,  finally,  but  a  small 
matter  of  expressage.  The  very  first  copy  ever  dis 
tributed,  by  the  way,  bears  the  inscription:  "To  the 


Bebinfc  tbe  Scenes  61 

Author  of  the  Author's  Being,  with  the  Author's 
love." 

I  never  could  understand  the  fascination  possessed  by 
so  many  persons  to  visit  that  strange  land  called  ' '  be 
hind  the  scenes."  Although  I  have  had  many  experi 
ences  within  its  border,  nowhere  else  have  I  ever  felt  so 
uncomfortably  futile  and  in  the  way,  an  idle  man  among 
hundreds  of  busy  persons,  stage  carpenters,  scene-shift 
ers,  scene-painters,  electricians,  general  managers,  stage 
managers,  stars,  soubrettes,  choruses,  supernumer 
aries,  devils,  angels, — all  having  something  to  do,  and 
all  doing  it  with  all  their  might,  while  the  visitor  has 
nothing  whatever  to  do  and  does  not  know  how  to  do 
it  in  a  graceful  way.  The  contrast  between  the  real 
and  the  ideal  in  stageland  is  stranger  than  fiction  and 
sometimes  it  is  impossible  to  realise  which  is  the  truth. 
In  1879  or  1880,  something  took  me  with  Kate  Field  to 
one  of  the  theatres  in  Brooklyn  to  see  Adelaide  Phillips, 
who  was  playing  Pinafore  in  the  Boston  Ideals  Com 
pany.  Contrary  to  my  custom  I  went  behind  the  scenes 
and  had  a  long  talk  with  the  prima  donna  during  one 
of  the  waits;  resting  with  her  on  the  long  step-ladder 
which  some  one  had  left  conveniently  lying  on  its  side; 
"  both  sitting  on  one  cushion,"  as  Helena  says  in  The 
Midsummer  NighCs  Dream,  but  not  both  "  warbling 
of  one  song."  She  was  the  very  ideal  Buttercup,  with 
a  voice  perfectly  suited  to  the  part. 

After  the  Phillips  episode  we  went  into  the  Park 
Theatre  across  the  way  to  see  the  last  two  acts  of 


65  tCalhe  in  a  Xibrar$ 

Othello.  Warde,  playing  lago,  had  some  trouble  which 
he  wished  to  pour  into  my  ear,  and  he  sent  for  me  to  go 
to  the  fascinating  regions.  It  was  rather  a  queer  ex 
perience,  after  talking  music  with  Buttercup  and  non 
sense  with  Hebe  on  the  deck  of  H.  M.  S.  Pinafore,  to 
talk  of  serious  affairs  with  lago  in  Desdemona's  bed 
chamber  in  Cypress  while  Othello  (who  happened  to 
be  John  McCullough),  in  all  the  paraphernalia  and 
burnt-cork  of  the  character,  was  walking  about  direct 
ing  the  next  "set"  and  asking  me,  now  and  then, 
how  long  Booth  and  I  stayed  together  in  Saratoga,  or 
some  other  personal  question,  and  expressing  a  wish 
that  some  English  tailor  had  made  him  an  ulster  as 
good-looking  as  was  mine!  The  Moor  of  Venice  in  an 
ulster  seemed  to  be  a  long  step  from  the  impressive  to 
the  grotesque. 

There  is  a  very  confused  and  erroneous  notion  in  the 
lay  mind  with  regard  to  the  actor  as  a  gentleman  and 
as  a  man;  and  unfortunately  some  few  of  the  profession 
— by  the  laxity  of  their  morals,  and  by  their  curious 
proneness  to  divorce— have  damaged  the  reputation  of 
a  set  of  men  who  are  as  decent  and  as  respectable  as  are 
the  members  of  any  profession  whatsoever,  taken  as  a 
whole. 

The  management  of  The  Players,  after  years  of  ex 
perience  with  actors  as  members  of  the  institution,  will 
certify  that  the  player  proper,  who  is  very  largely  re 
presented  in  the  Club,  is  as  a  rule  more  temperate,  better 
behaved,  more  prompt  in  his  payments  of  all  indebted- 


Sensibilities  of  actors  63 

ness,  than  are  any  other  class  of  men  in  any  other  walk 
of  life. 

One  well-known  comedian  came  in  one  morning 
early,  absolutely  in  tears,  a  man  of  forty  or  more  and 
with  children  of  his  own.  He  could  n't  find  his 
mother!  He  had  been  on  a  long  travelling  tour,  and 
when  he  arrived  at  home  he  discovered  that  his  mother 
had  suddenly  quitted  her  boarding-house  and  had  for 
some  unknown  reason  failed  to  leave  her  address  ;  and 
there  he  was,  with  his  mother  looking  for  him  some 
where  and  he  could  n't  discover  her  for  at  least  a  couple 
of  hours! 

I  once  heard  two  young  members  of  the  profession — 
so  I  gathered  from  their  talk,  though  they  were  person 
ally  unknown  to  me — discussing  an  opportunity  which 
had  come  to  one  of  them  to  double  his  salary,  to  get 
better  parts,'  and  perhaps  to  establish  his  growing  re 
putation  in  a  far-away  city;  but  he  had  concluded  not 
to  accept  the  offer,  tempting  as  it  was.  His  friend  said: 

"  But  you  can  take  your  wife  and  the  kids  with  you. 
You  can  certainly  afford  to  do  that  with  an  extra  hund 
red  dollars  a  week." 

"  Oh,  it  is  n't  the  wife  and  the  kids;  ot  course  they 
go  wherever  I  go;  but  it 's  the  father  and  the  mother. 
They  want  me,  and  I  think  they  need  me  here,  and  I 
am  not  going  to  settle  down  three  thousand  miles 
away  from  them  for  any  amount  of  money." 

This  was  not  said  for  the  world.  It  was  simply  an 
ordinary  expression  of  the  natural  filial  feeling  of  a 


64  ftalfes  in  a  Xibrarp 

man  who  honoured  the  fifth  commandment  to  the  very 
letter.  And  yet  the  world  thinks  that  the  actor  has  no 
feeling  for  anybody  but  himself,  coupled  with  a  little 
feeling  for  his  art. 

When  Frederick  Warde,  the  English  tragedian, 
young,  promising,  with  his  undoubted  American  suc 
cess  not  yet  fully  established,  brought  his  wife  and  child 
ren  from  London  to  make  their  home  with  him  in  the 
new  world,  he  was  after  various  vicissitudes  of  fortune 
— most  of  them  discouraging — engaged  by  Mr.  Booth 
to  play  leading  parts  during  the  coming  season.  They 
were  to  open  in  Baltimore  on  a  certain  Monday  evening 
and  Warde  was  to  be  Othello  to  the  lago  of  the  star. 
The  company,  long  associated  with  Mr.  Booth  with 
this  single  exception,  was  not  assembled  and  there 
could  be  but  one  or  two  rehearsals  before  the  initial 
performance.  Warde  had  never  even  seen  the  play  of 
Othello,  and  had  no  idea  how  to  dress  it, —  a  very  im 
portant  item  to  a  man  who  had  little  money  to  devote 
to  costumes.  There  were,  of  course,  professional  per 
sons  who  could  have  fitted  him  out  from  wig  to  sandal, 
but  to  these  he  could  not  afford  to  go.  He  read  the 
tragedy  many  times,  studied  his  part  till  he  was  what 
is  called  ' '  letter  perfect, ' '  and  at  the  Astor  Library  he 
copied  many  drawings,  coloured  by  his  own  hand,  of 
the  dresses  he  had  to  wear.  These  garments  and 
effects  were  made  out  of  the  cheapest  material  from  his 
own  patterns,  cut  and  sewed  by  his  wife,  and  for  six 
weeks  nothing  in  that  house  was  thought  or  talked  but 


Hctore*  Cbilfcren  65 

Othello.  The  young  man,  realising  what  it  all  meant 
to  him,  was  exceedingly  anxious  about  results,  as  was 
his  wife.  They  lived  in  a  poor,  humble  little  apartment 
and  he  was  to  take  a  midnight  train  to  the  scene  of  his 
great  effort  only  a  day  or  two  before  he  was  to  make 
his  debut  in  one  of  the  most  important  and  trying  parts 
of  the  English-speaking  drama. 

I  went  with  him  to  the  train,  and  just  as  we  were 
starting  Mrs.  Warde  came  down  with  her  eyes  swim 
ming,  and  said: 

"I  've  just  put  the  children  to  bed  and  I  must  tell 
you  what  Arthur  prayed  ";  Arthur  was  then  a  lad  not 
out  of  his  frocks.  It  seems  that  the  child,  kneeling  by 
his  little  cot,  had  gone  through  the  regular  formula, 
11  Our  Father,'.'  "  Now  I  lay  me,"  "  Please,  God,  re 
member  papa  and  mamma  and  little  sister  and  dear 
grandmother  in  England,"  and  had  then  added,  as  an 
impromptu,  "  and  O  God,  do  please  help  papa  through 
with  Othello." 

On  the  Tuesday  morning  there  came  to  me  a  telegram 
from  Warde  saying,  simply,  "  I  think  God  has  heard 
Arthur's  prayer." 

I  told  this  story  at  a  dinner  one  night,  as  I  am  trying 
to  tell  it  now,  and  was  startled  by  an  inquiry  from  the 
wife  of  a  well-known  New  York  clergyman  who,  with 
wonder  and  doubt  in  her  voice,  demanded, 

"  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  actors'  children  say 
their  prayers  ! ' ' 

Actors'   children  do  say  their  prayers.     And,   as  a 

5 


66  aalhs  in  a  Xibran? 

class,  few  better  behaved  or  more  dutiful  children  or 
more  human  have  come  within  my  ken. 

Henry  Irving' s  generosity  is  unbounded.  Because  I 
spoke  to  him  once  of  an  old  receipt-book  of  one  of  the 
early  Philadelphia  theatres  as  being  invaluable  on  ac 
count  of  the  signatures  it  contained,  and  said  that  I 
would  like  to  own  it  if  the  price  of  the  dealer  who  had 
it  for  sale  was  at  all  within  my  limit,  he  bought  the 
book  and  gave  it  to  me  as  a  Christmas  box. 

I  have  known  Irving  to  devote  the  whole  of  a  very 
busy  day  in  New  York,  neglecting  rehearsals  and  social 
engagements,  to  find  for  an  English  painter  of  his  ac 
quaintance — clever  but  unfortunate — some  proper  and 
comfortable  studio  and  home  where  he  would  be  able 
to  do  better  work  in  more  cheerful  and  appropriate  sur 
roundings.  After  taking  the  apartment,  paying  out  of 
his  own  pocket  three  months'  rent  in  advance,  he  saw 
that  the  man  of  the  brush  was  carefully  installed  in  his 
new  quarters  and  then  rushed  away  before  any  thanks 
could  be  uttered. 

He  posed  to  the  same  artist  in  L,ondon  for  his  por 
trait  as  Hamlet.  During  one  of  the  sittings  there  came 
back  from  the  Royal  Academy  Exhibition,  lately  closed, 
two  little  landscapes  unsold.  The  disappointment  of 
the  painter  was  expressed  very  clearly  in  his  face  be 
cause  he  had  expected  by  the  disposal  of  the  pictures 
to  put  himself  in  very  necessary  funds.  Irving  ex 
pressed  his  sympathy  and  asked  the  price  of  the  draw 
ings.  They  were  catalogued  at  one  hundred  and  fifty 


's  (Benerositp  67 


guineas  apiece,  but  very  much  less  would  have  been 
gladly  accepted.  Irving  said: 

"  Send  them  down  and  I  '11  have  them  hung  in  the 
foyer  of  the  Lyceum  where  the}'  will  be  seen  by  men 
and  women,  and  perhaps  attract  attention." 

This  unexpected  and  kindly  offer  was  eagerly  ac 
cepted.  The  pictures  would  go  as  soon  as  they  were 
properly  framed  and,  when  properly  framed,  they  went. 
Mr.  Bram  Stoker,  Mr.  Irving'  s  friend  and  manager, 
wrote  to  inquire  the  price  of  the  frames.  This,  the 
painter  replied,  was  his  own  affair:  he  was  willing  to 
pay  half  a  dozen  times  the  cost  of  the  mounting  for  the 
sake  of  having  his  work  where  it  was.  Mr.  Stoker 
said  that  Mr.  Irving  insisted  and  a  bill  for  ten  pound 
ten  was  despatched  to  the  Lyceum  office.  The  reply 
was  received  by  return  post  and  contained  Irving'  s 
check  for  three  hundred  and  ten  guineas. 

A  good  many  years  ago,  no  matter  when,  while  Ed 
win  Booth  was  playing  a  successful  engagement  in  one 
of  the  leading  theatres  of  the  country,  no  matter  where, 
I  dropped  into  his  dressing-room  one  night  during  the 
course  of  the  performance.  He  chanced  to  be  in  a  par 
ticularly  happy  and  cheerful  frame  of  mind  —  and  he 
was  often  cheerful  and  happy,  tradition  to  the  con 
trary  notwithstanding.  He  was  smoking  the  inevitable 
pipe,  and  he  was  arrayed  in  the  costume  of  Richelieu, 
with  his  feet  upon  the  table,  submitting  patiently  to 
the  manipulations  of  his  wardrobe-man,  or  "  dresser." 
After  a  few  words  of  greeting  the  call-boy  knocked  at 


68  aalfts  in  a  Xibraq? 

the  door  and  said  that  Mr.  Booth  was  wanted  at  a 
certain  * '  left  lower  entrance. ' '  The  protagonist 
jumped  up  quickly,  and  asked  if  I  would  stay  where 
I  was  and  keep  his  pipe  alight,  or  go  along  with  him 
and  see  him  "lunch  the  cuss  of  Rum,"  quoting  the 
words  of  George  L.  Fox,  who  had  been  producing 
just  about  that  time  a  ludicrously  clever  burlesque  of 
Booth  in  the  same  part.  I  followed  him  to  the  wings 
and  stood  by  his  side  while  he  waited  for  his  cue.  It 
was  the  fourth  act  of  the  drama,  I  remember,  and 
the  stage  was  set  as  a  garden,  nothing  of  which  was 
visible  from  our  position  but  the  flies  and  the  back  of 
the  wings;  and  we  might  have  been  placed  in  a  great 
bare  barn  so  far  as  any  scenic  effect  was  apparent. 
Adrian,  Baradas,  and  the  conspirators  were  speaking, 
and  at  an  opposite  entrance,  waiting  for  her  cue,  was 
the  Julie  of  the  evening.  She  was  a  good  woman  and 
an  excellent  actress  but  unfortunate^  not  a  personal 
favourite  with  the  star,  who  called  my  attention  to  the 
bismuth  with  which  she  was  covered  and  said  that  if 
she  got  any  of  it  on  his  new  scarlet  cloak  he  would 
pinch  her  black  and  blue  —  puffing  volumes  of  smoke 
into  my  face  as  he  spoke.  When  the  proper  time  came 
he  rushed  upon  the  stage,  with  a  parting  injunction  not 
to  let  his  pipe  go  out;  and  with  the  great  meerschaum 
in  my  own  mouth,  I  saw  the  heroine  of  the  play  cast 
herself  into  his  arms  and  noticed,  to  my  great  amuse 
ment,  that  she  did  smear  the  robes  of  my  L,ord  Cardinal 
with  the  greasy  white  stuff  he  so  much  disliked.  I 


Bootb  as  Hctor          69 


winked  back  at  the  half-comic,  half-angry  glance  he 
shot  towards  me  over  Julie's  snowy  shoulders.  I  half 
expected  to  hear  the  real  scream  he  had  threatened  to 
cause  her  to  utter.  I  thought  of  nothing  but  the  hu 
morous,  absurd  side  of  the  situation;  I  was  eager  to 
keep  the  pipe  going.  And  lo!  he  raised  his  hand  and 
spoke  those  familiar  lines: 

"Around  her  form  I  draw  the  awful  circle  of  our 
solemn  Church.  Place  but  a  foot  within  that  hallowed 
ground  and  on  thy  head,  yea,  though  it  wear  a 
crown,  I  '11  launch  the  curse  of  Rome!  "  Every  head 
upon  the  stage  was  uncovered  and  I  found  my  own 
hat  in  my  hand!  I  forgot  all  the  tomfoolery  we  had 
been  indulging  in;  I  forgot  his  pipe,  and  my  promise 
regarding  it;  I  forgot  that  I  had  been  an  habitual 
theatregoer  all  my  life;  I  forgot  that  I  was  a  Protes 
tant  heretic,  and  that  it  was  nothing  but  stage-  play; 
I  forgot  that  Booth  was  my  familiar,  intimate  friend; 
I  forgot  everything,  except  the  fact  that  I  was  stand 
ing  in  the  presence  of  the  great,  visible  head  of  the 
Catholic  religion  in  France,  and  that  I  was  ready 
to  drop  upon  my  knees  with  the  rest  of  them  at  his 
invocation. 

That  was  Edwin  Booth,  the  Actor! 

In  1  88  1  Edwin  Booth  wrote: 

"  I  hope  your  dear  mother  may  be  spared  to  you 
many,  many  years.  My  dear  old  mother  is  not  so  well 
as  I  could  wish  and  my  sister  Rosalie,  her  nurse,  begins 
to  fail.  I  'd  rather  have  a  cosy  home,  like  yours,  with 


;o  Galfce  in  a  library 

mother,  than  all  the  flummery  and  puffery  I  'm  wasting 
my  life  for." 

A  few  months  later  he  wrote  from  London : 
"I  scratch  in  haste,  therefore  excuse  my  incoherence. 
I  am  tired  in  body  and  brain,  my  dear  Boy.  The  poor 
little  girl  [his  second  wife]  is  passing  awa}^  from  us. 
For  weeks  she  has  been  failing  rapidly;  and  the  doctors 
have  at  last  refused  to  attend  her  longer,  unless  she  fol 
lows  their  directions  and  keeps  her  bed  day  and  night. 
They  tell  me  that  she  is  dying  and  that  I  may  expect 
her  death  at  any  time.  It  is  very  pitiful  to  see  her  fad 
ing  before  our  eyes.  Hdwina,  deprived  of  sleep  and 
half  dead  with  sorrow  for  the  only  mother  she  has  ever 
known,  and  I — worn  out  with  my  nightly  labors  and 
wretched  all  the  while — sit  turn  by  turn  to  cheer  her. 
The  doctors — Mackenzie  and  Sir  William  Jenner — have 
pronounced  her  case  hopeless.  Edwina  has  written  to 
Mrs.  McVickar;  and  at  last  Mary  knows  that  she  is 
dying.  You  can  imagine  my  condition  just  now;  act 
ing  at  random  every  evening  and  nursing  a  half-insane 
dying  wife  all  day,  and  all  night  too,  for  that  matter. 
I  am  scarce  sane  myself.  I  scribble  this  in  haste  at 
two  in  the  morning,  for  I  know  not  when  I  will  have  a 
chance  to  write  sensibly  and  coherently  again.  Good 
night.  And  God  bless  you." 

The  last  portrait  for  which  Booth  ever  sat  was  made 
by  Mr.  Bradley  in  black  and  white  and  it  was  repro 
duced  in  Harper' s  at  the  time  of  Booth's  death.  It  cost 
the  subject  a  long  and  weary  day's  sitting,  and  it  re- 


-  :  v          \h 

<£                           ,     v 

^        .  j 

V*   v*       \                      ^ 

V          \  ^          ^^ 

V    \                                     %" 

<          ^          '                     \A 

*            \  )-i 

>     N         ^C 

•  <  J      'i^ 

M  \i           > 

Hx     > 

ii  I  ]   x*: 

<•             v  1^ 

>,i  i      r 

If.  t  '  I    '  ^ 

t;'  J        * 

:  v  ^    K  O 

X       jJ      x 

s          *           H            <                         1 

*Y      A          \    - 

s  >  •  U.;t 

*f        •>         \ 

"^    rt 

I     *  d'    •  v;:3 

pv:Hf 

^•V':l 

j    -T 

I'lt^i 

:  •  *    "     v  (  i    I 

»    ^    N.     \   \J   v»-'-, 

^^W        \_          -^ 
.  f        ^        ^ 

N^'N>4            N     I 

lil^Jl  - 

\*        ***'      ( 

rs  w>    ^*k 

fe  i  '| 

iM*1i  - 

»^        ^^ 

s. 

"^     1    ^ 

Sentiment  of  Bootb         71 


presents  him  in  his  own  private  room  at  The  Players, 
surrounded  by  the  inanimate  things  he  loved  best. 
The  artist  found  him  in  an  old-fashioned,  common 
place,  rep-covered  arm-chair  of  the  late  Pierce  or  early 
Buchanan  period,  in  which  he  was  very  anxious  to  be 
portrayed;  and  it  was  with  no  little  persuasion  that  he 
was  induced  to  place  himself  in  another  seat  much  more 
old-fashioned  and  much  more  picturesque.  To  the 
artist,  who  was  a  stranger  to  him,  he  hesitated  to  give 
his  reason  for  the  queer  preference.  But  it  seems  that 
the  homely  piece  of  furniture  stood  in  the  parlour  of  Mr. 
Magonigle's  house,  in  which  lived  Booth's  first  wife, 
and  his  one  love;  that  it  was  deeply  associated  with  all 
the  sentiment  of  their  courting  days;  that  after  his 
marriage  he  had  asked  Mr.  Magonigle  for  it;  that  it 
had  gone  with  him,  always,  wherever  his  home  had 
been.  And  he  would  have  liked,  he  said,  in  his  ever- 
gentle  way,  to  have  had  it  in  the  picture  —  for  "  Mary's 
sake."  And  then  followed  many  tender,  loving  words 
concerning  that  same  Mary  whom  he  had  lost  thirty 
years  before. 

That  was  Edwin  Booth,  the  Son,  the  Husband,  and 
the  Father! 

I  can  hardly  remember  when  I  did  not  know  and 
a.dmire  Booth  as  an  actor.  We  first  met  personally  on 
a  lyong  Branch  boat  in  1865,  when  I  was  presented  to 
him  by  Lester  Wallack.  We  rarely  if  ever  met  until 
ten  years  later,  when,  through  common  friends,  we  were 
thrown  much  together.  My  mother  was  in  her  early 


72  Galfce  in  a  library 

widowhood  then.  Booth  and  his  wife  came  often  to  us 
and  we  went  often  to  them.  A  pleasant  acquaintance 
ripened  by  degrees  into  an  intimate  friendship.  Booth 
soon  exhibited  a  very  warm  feeling  for  my  mother. 
She  came  next  in  his  heart  to  his  own  mother,  he  used 
to  say;  and  he  never  forgot  her.  Almost  the  last  time 
we  spoke  alone  together  we  spoke  of  her,  years  after  her 
death,  and  in  a  most  sadly  tender  and  prophetic  way. 

In  the  summer  of  1875  or  1876  the  mother  and  I 
chanced  to  find  the  Booths  at  the  Grand  Union  Hotel 
in  Saratoga  and,  at  their  request,  we  occupied  two 
vacant  rooms  in  a  little  suite  engaged  by  them  in  one 
of  the  most  retired  cottages  in  the  Grand  Union 
grounds.  We  were  together  a  month  or  two,  dining 
at  the  same  table  and  spending  most  of  our  waking 
hours  as  one  family.  It  was  at  this  period  that  the  sec 
ond  Mrs.  Booth,  always  a  nervous  invalid,  began  to 
show  signs  of  the  lack  of  mental  balance  which  finally 
sapped  her  own  life  and  almost  broke  his  heart.  Dur 
ing  her  frequent  attacks  at  Saratoga,  and  later  when 
the  two  families  met  in  New  York  and  in  London, 
sometimes  she  was  very  trying;  but  I  never  knew  him 
to  show  a  sign  or  utter  a  word  of  impatience.  He  bore 
meekly  with  everything  she  said  and  did;  made  excuses 
for  her;  concealed  her  irritability  and  her  irresponsi 
bility  as  much  as  possible;  held  ?aer  in  his  arms  as  if 
she  were  a  baby  for  hours  and  nights  together  without 
a  murmur  and  showed  a  devotion  that  hardly  can  be 
equalled. 


Companionsbip  witb  Bootb       73 

After  my  mother's  death,  I  went  abroad  at  once  with 
an  aunt  and  her  children.  We  found  Booth  playing  at 
the  Adelphi  Theatre  in  I/ondon,  and  living  at  an  hotel 
where  he  was  neither  satisfied  or  comfortable.  Finally 
Booth  and  his  daughter  moved  into  the  apartments 
my  people  had  vacated  in  Clarges  Street,  Piccadilly.  I 
occupied  a  bedroom  and  sitting-room  on  the  upper  floor 
and  of  course  saw  Booth  daily.  He  was  ill  and  dis 
pirited.  He  smoked  too  much,  took  too  little  exercise, 
was  neglectful  of  his  diet,  and  in  a  bad  physical  condi 
tion  generally.  He  rehearsed  every  morning  and  he 
played  every  evening;  and  his  doctor  said  he  must  live 
more  in  the  open  air  and  take  long  walks  every  day.  I 
was  busy  and  naturally  absorbed,  but  I  made  it  my 
duty  to  see  that  Booth  went  on  foot  to  and  from  the 
theatre  every  evening,  I  always  going  with  him.  And 
very  pleasant  are  my  recollections  of  those  walks  and 
talks.  Down  Piccadilly,  through  the  Haymarket, 
across  Trafalgar  Square,  and  along  the  Strand  we  went; 
on  through  the  parks  to  Whitehall;  and  home  by  way 
of  the  Embankment.  Booth's  face  was  not  well  enough 
known  to  be  recognised  by  all  the  passers-by  as  it 
would  have  been  in  an  American  city  and  he  thor 
oughly  enjoyed  the  feeling  of  incognito.  Nothing  dis 
tressed  him  more  than  notoriety  or  public  observation. 
He  rarely  travelled  in  a  street  car  or  an  omnibus  on  that 
account  and  I  have  seen  him  shrink  like  a  hyperbash- 
ful  child  at  any  sign  of  recognition  from  strangers. 

One  perfect  night,  when  the  sky  was  without  a  cloud 


74  Galfce  in  a  Xibrar? 

and  the  full  moon  was  high  in  the  heavens,  we  wan 
dered  home  from  the  theatre  along  the  shore  of  the 
Thames;  turned  into  the  little  square  upon  which 
looked  the  windows  of  the  Banqueting  Hall  out  of 
which  Charles  I.  stepped  to  his  death;  passed  through 
Axe  Yard,  where  Pepys  once  lived;  paused  in  front  of 
St.  Margaret's,  where  Raleigh's  head  was  buried;  gazed 
at  the  Abbey;  and  drifted,  by  some  curious  chance  of 
gates  being  open,  into  the  Cloisters.  There  we  stopped 
for  a  long  time,  with  the  whole  sacred  place  to  ourselves 
and  no  sound  but  the  bell  of  the  clock-tower  ringing  the 
quarters.  The  influence  of  the  spot  and  the  hour  was 
upon  us,  and  Kdwin  spoke  of  it  all  in  a  never-to-be-for 
gotten  way;  of  Sheridan  and  Johnson  and  Cumberland, 
of  Garrick  and  Newton  and  Chaucer  and  the  rest  of 
them,  sleeping  quietly  so  near  us.  We  were  loath  to 
leave,  but  he  dreaded  being  locked  in  the  place  and 
thereby  distressing  "  daughter  "  by  his  non-appearance 
all  night.  And  we  walked  back  to  our  own  door,  al 
most  without  a  word. 

Booth  had  a  keen  sense  of  humour,  and  among  his 
intimates  he  was  anything  but  the  sad  and  gloomy  man 
whom  the  outside  world  associated,  always,  with  the 
character  of  the  Melancholy  Dane  of  the  stage.  His 
published  letters  show  how  bright  and  cheerful  he  was, 
usually,  in  his  familiar  correspondence;  and  this  rhym 
ing  epistle  is  an  example  of  his  not  infrequent  efforts  in 
that  peculiar  line.  It  came  with  an  engraved  portrait, 
neatly  framed: 


EDWIN  BOOTH 


IRonsense  IDerse  75 


Xmas  Eve,  '79. 
DEAR  H. : 

Think  not  that  I  forget, 
Or  that  because  the  walkin  's  wet, 
Is  why  I  have  n't  called  as  yet 
Fumer  la  pipe,  ou  cigarette, 
In  your  sanctum -sanctorum. 
'T  is  but  because  I  have  to  fry 
Some  other  fish  before  they  're  dry ; 
This  only  is  the  reason  why, 
My  friends  I  do  not  bore  'em. 
So,  since  I  can't  alter  chez  vous, 
This  dead-head  I  present,  in  lieu 
Of  the  one  which  here  I  shoulder, 
Hoping  this,  too,  may  likewise  call 
Before  the  New  Year  learns  to  crawl, 
Or  the  old  one  grows  much  older. 

But  I  know  not,  dear  Hutton, 
If  you  '11  care  a  button 
For  this  mug  o'  my  own  that  I  send, 
Though  't  is  told  me  as  truth 
(May  be  flatt'ry,  forsooth) 
By  some  who  are  judges — 
That  this  very  mug  is 
By  far  the  best  phiz 
Of  your  friend 
Edwin  Booth. 

P.  S. — You  may  spurn  it,  or  dern  it, 

Or  dash  it,  or  dang  it,  or  burn  it, 
Or  mash  it — by  puttin'  yer  fut  on. 
Do  anything — rather  than  hang  it, 
If  you  don't  like  it,  dear  Hutton. 

In  my  Memoir  of  Booth  I  have  spoken  of  his  kindness 
of  heart,  of  his  delicacy  of  feeling,  of  his  thouglitfulness 
for  others,  and  of  his  unbounded  silent  charity.  Even 


76  ftalfcs  in  a  OLibrarp 

the  members  of  his  own  family  and  his  most  intimate 
friends  never  heard  of  half  the  good  he  did.  Sitting  in 
his  room  in  The  Players,  when  his  physical  decay  was 
first  becoming  manifest,  I  told  him  of  a  letter  I  had  just 
received  from  the  daughter  of  one  of  the  old  comedians 
in  which  she  offered  the  club  a  portrait  of  her  father. 
Booth  had  received  a  letter  from  her  to  the  same  pur 
port;  would  I  write  for  both  of  us  in  reply  ?  Her  note 
was  on  his  desk  across  the  room,  that  black-bordered 
one,  on  the  top  of  a  pile  of  unanswered  epistles,  he 
said,  just  at  my  hand.  I  picked  it  up  and  read  aloud, 
' '  My  dear  Mr.  Booth  :  How  can  I  ever  thank  you  for 
your  great  liberality — "  "No,  no,  not  that  one;  the 
next."  The  next  began,  "  I  do  not  know  what  to  say 
to  you  for  jour  wonderful  generosity — "  "No,  no; 
not  that  either  ";  and  he  picked  up  the  whole  package 
and  threw  them  into  an  open  drawer,  ashamed  that 
I  should  unwittingly  have  discovered  some  of  his 
benefactions. 

When  an  old  friend  and  fellow-player  died,  Edwin 
bought  a  lot  for  his  remains,  buried  him,  placed  a 
handsome  monument  over  his  head,  purchased  a  house 
and  furnished  it  fully  for  the  widow,  and  gave  her 
a  liberal  income,  continued  to  her  after  his  own  death. 
He  was  staying  with  us — as  he  often  did  before  he  had 
a  city  home  at  The  Players, — detained  by  some  mysteri 
ous  and  vexatious  business,  he  said,  which  kept  him, 
much  against  his  will,  from  the  bedside  of  his  daughter, 
was  expecting  her  first  confinement  in  Boston.  He 


Booth's  (Senerosit?  77 

was  in  receipt  of  long  and  not  very  encouraging  tele 
grams  from  Mr.  Grossman  every  day;  and  he  was 
visibly  anxious.  What  it  was,  of  course,  I  never  asked, 
and  only  knew  at  last  by  accident.  The  widow  called 
one  day  when  Edwin  was  smoking  in  the  study.  The 
maid  reported  that  there  was  a  reading-class,  or  a  lec 
ture  in  the  library;  and  the  old  lady  was  shown  upstairs. 
I  rose  to  go  after  the  first  greeting  but  she  asked  me  to 
stay; — perhaps  I  could  help  them, — and  then  the  story 
of  the  mysterious  and  important  business  came  out. 
Booth  was  arranging  for  her  husband's  monument. 
She  thought  the  pedestal  too  high,  or  too  low;  she 
could  not  decide  upon  the  shape  of  the  granite  posts 
or  the  railing;  and  she  did  not  altogether  like  the  in 
scription!  And  the  patient  benefactor  was  waiting  in 
New  York,  consumed  by  his  paternal  anxiety,  saying 
nothing  to  his  old  and  forlorn  friend,  who  was  of  course 
entirely  unconscious  of  his  feelings,  until  she  had  made 
up  her  mind  as  to  what  she  wanted.  I  settled  every 
thing  for  them  in  a  few  moments,  and  despatched  him 
to  Boston  that  same  evening  to  make  the  acquaintance 
of  his  new  grandchild. 

Another  old  friend  of  Booth,  a  superannuated  actor 
and  a  very  aged  man,  lunched  with  him  one  day  at 
The  Players.  The  weather  was  threatening  as  he  left 
and  his  host  sent  him  home  in  a  carriage.  The  guest 
was  very  much  affected  when  they  parted  and  tried  to 
say  something,  in  a  half-tearful  way,  which  Booth 
would  not  let  him  utter.  After  he  had  gone  some  one 


78  Galfes  in  a  library 

spoke  of  the  gentleness  and  sweetness  of  the  veteran's 
character  and  said  that  it  was  to  be  hoped  that  he  had 
managed  to  save  enough  to  keep  his  body  and  his  soul 
together  for  the  little  time  that  was  left  to  him  here. 

"Oh,  yes,  he's  all  right!"  replied  Booth.  "He 
has  something  to  support  him  comfortably  as  long  as 
he  lives,  poor  dear.  And  I  'm  glad  of  it." 

After  Booth  had  passed  awa}'  it  was  learned  that  the 
something  —  more  than  enough — was  furnished  by 
Booth,  who  had  invested  nine  thousand  dollars  in  an 
annuity  to  cheer  his  fellow-player's  declining  years. 
But  he  did  not  even  hint  of  such  a  deed.  He  simply 
said,  "  I  am  glad  of  it!  " 

Many  years  before  that  I  called  upon  Booth  one 
afternoon  at  the  Albemarle  Hotel  in  New  York,  during 
an  engagement  of  his  at  the  Fifth  Avenue  Theatre. 
His  wife  was  dead,  his  daughter  was  married  and  liv 
ing  in  a  distant  city,  and  he  was  quite  alone  and  lonely. 
I  brought  in  to  him  a  little  fresh  air,  something  from 
the  outside  world,  and  change  of  thought;  and  I  was 
made  to  feel  that  my  presence  was  not  unwelcome. 
With  the  never-missing  pipe  he  sat  in  an  easy  chair, 
restful  and  content,  talking  of  the  old  times  and  old 
seasons  in  which  he  then  was  beginning  almost  exclu 
sively  to  live,  when  the  waiter  entered  the  room  and 
put  a  visiting-card  into  his  hand.  "  Tell  the  lady  that 
Mr.  Booth  is  engaged, ' '  was  the  quiet  remark,  and  he 
continued  the  conversation  where  it  had  been  inter 
rupted.  The  caller  was  an  influential  leader  of  society 


Callers  79 


in  New  York  and  a  charming  woman  personally  and  I 
remonstrated  with  him  for  not  receiving  her  and  her 
equally  charming  daughter,  who  was  with  her.  But 
lie  could  n't  be  bothered!  In  a  few  moments  there 
came  another  card — this  time  that  of  a  prominent  man 
of  affairs,  a  man  known  honourably  throughout  the 
country,  a  busy  man,  whose  call  was  a  compliment  in 
itself;  but  "  Mr.  Booth  was  lying  down."  Still  another 
card  was  presented,  two  cards,  those  of  a  man  and  his 
wife  whom  nobody  could  afford  to  refuse  to  receive. 
But  "  Mr.  Booth  was  engaged."  At  last  came  a  card, 
followed  by  the  request  to  "  Show  the  lady  up!  "  I  put 
on  my  overcoat  to  leave  the  room,  but  was  told  to  wait. 
The  lady  was  a  friend  of  mine  whom  I  would  be  glad 
to  see  and  who  would  be  glad  to  see  me.  Curious  to 
discover  the  identity  of  the  person  so  distinguished  I 
did  wait  and  Black  Betty  entered,  the  old  negro  servant 
who  had  nursed  his  daughter  when  she  was  a  baby, 
who  had  taken  the  most  tender  care  of  his  wife  when 
she  was  slowly  and  unhappily  dying,  and  who  had 
been  a  life-long,  devoted,  faithful  friend  to  them  all. 
She  had  left  his  service  after  his  daughter's  marriage 
and  had  been  married  recently  herself.  She  kissed 
"Massa  Ed  win's"  hand, —  she  was  born  a  slave,  —  she 
shook  hands  cordially  with  rne,  she  was  placed  in  the 
most  comfortable  rocking-chair,  and  she  began  to  talk 
familiarly  about  her  own  affairs  and  his.  She  could  n't 
afford  to  go  to  the  theatre  "  no  mo',"  she  said,  but  she 
wanted  her  husband  to  see  Massa  Kdwin  play;  could 


Galfts  in  a  library 


she  have  a  pass  for  two  for  that  night  ?  He  wrote  the 
pass  at  once,  which  she  read  and  returned  to  him  with 
a  shake  of  the  head.  They  was  only  niggas;  the  do'- 
keeper  would  n't  let  no  niggas  into  the  orchestra  seats; 
a  pass  to  the  gallery  was  good  enough  for  them!  A 
second  paper  she  received  silently  but  with  another  and 
still  more  decided  shake  of  the  head.  I  saw  it  over  her 
shoulder  and  it  read,  '  '  Pass  my  friend  Betty  -  and 
party  to  my  box  this  evening.  Edwin  Booth."  And 
Betty  occupied  the  box! 

Still  he  was  too  tired  to  receive  the  daughter  of  one 
of  the  most  distinguished  men  of  science  in  the  country, 
a  judge  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  or 
a  bishop  and  his  wife  ! 

I  remember  once  asking  Booth  to  put  his  autograph 
on  an  engraving  of  himself  for  the  daughter  of  Mr.  J. 
Henry  Harper.  He  asked  for  the  young  lady's  name 
in  full,  and  being  told  that  it  was  Mary  Hoe  Harper,  he 
said,  —  punning  on  the  well-known  lines  from  Pinafore^ 
then  in  everybody's  mouth,  —  "  What,  Ho  !  the  Merry 
Harper  and  the  Star  !  " 

Marjory  Telford,  the  little  daughter  of  an  old  friend 
of  Booth,  chanced  to  be  born  on  Booth's  birthday.  He 
never  forgot  her  or  the  fact  and,  no  matter  in  what  part 
of  the  world  he  was,  some  souvenir  of  the  occasion  was 
sent  to  the  child  whom  he  playfully  called  his  "  twin." 
On  one  of  these  anniversaries,  when  Booth  was  fifty-six 
and  Marjory  was  four,  a  supper-party  was  given  him 
at  The  Players.  A  few  of  his  intimates  participated 


Bootb's  £?mpatb£  81 

and  the  table  was  loaded  with  flowers,  among  them 
being  a  bunch  of  red  roses  ' '  From  the  Servants  of  the 
Club ' '  and  a  modest  little  cluster  of  violets  attached  to 
which  was  the  inscription  from  Marjory  Telford : 
"  Dear  Mr.  Booth.  We  are  sixty  to-day." 

When  the  guest  of  the  evening  went  up  to  his  room 
that  night  the  only  flowers  he  carried  with  him  were 
the  violets  of  Marjory.  Telford  and  the  red  roses  of  the 
servants  of  the  Club. 

Booth  was  playing  an  engagement  in  New  York 
when  my  mother  died  suddenly  and  without  warning, 
in  1882.  Mr.  Telford,  knowing  how  dear  she  was  to 
Booth,  broke  the  news  to  him  in  his  dressing-room  at 
the  theatre  and  he  came  immediately  to  the  house  of 
mourning,  about  midnight.  He  did  not  ask  to  see  me, 
he  did  not  want  to  intrude,  he  did  not  even  want  it 
known  that  he  was  there.  He  simply  felt  that  he  must 
come.  He  was  taken  to  my  room.  I  was  lying  on  a 
sofa,  too  unhappy  to  think,  realising  nothing  but  the 
awful  fact  that  I  had  to  meet  the  greatest  sorrow  that 
had  ever  come  to  me.  Booth  sat  by  my  side  and  kissed 
the  tear- wet  cheek  —  no  other  man  had  kissed  it  for 
many,  many  years — and  he  said  simply,  "My  poor  boy  ; 
my  poor  boy  !  "  I  tried  to  tell  all  this  in  my  Memoir 
of  Booth,  when  my  grief  at  the  loss  of  him  was  too  fresh. 
I  can  hardly  tell  it  now. 

A  short  time  ,  before  his  own  passing  away  my 
mother's  name  came  up  in  our  talk  one  afternoon  at 
The  Players.  It  was  in  May,  as  I  remember,  and  I 

6 


82  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

think  it  was  the  anniversary  of  her  death.  Booth  was 
very  feeble  and  rather  sad  and  he  told  how  she  had 
helped  and  comforted  him  in  his  trials  by  her  strong 
nature  and  by  her  affectionate  womanly  sympathy,  and 
how  much  he  loved  her.  After  some  moments  of  abso 
lute  silence  on  his  part,  and  when  for  an  instant  we 
were  left  alone  together  in  the  room,  he  turned  to  me 
abruptly  and  said: 

"I  '11  see  her  before  you  do,  dear  Boy." 

And  I  replied: 

"  Give  her  my  love,  Edwin;  give  her  my  love." 

And  I  am  sure  he  did. 

Mr.  Booth  gave  to  The  Players  not  only  the  house 
and  the  ground  upon  which  the  house  was  built,  but 
all  the  furniture  and  books  and  objects  of  art  which 
were  in  his  own  home  in  Boston.  In  the  library  he 
placed  his  valuable  collection  of  dramatic  portraits, 
from  life,  of  the  giants  of  the  stage  in  the  days  gone 
by.  The  only  picture  in  the  room  still  occupying  the 
place  of  honour  between  the  front  windows  which  is 
not  of  a  player  is  a  portrait  of  Washington,  supposed 
to  be  from  life  but  not  authenticated.  It  came  into 
Mr.  Booth's  hands  by  purchase  from  an  impoverished 
family  in  the  South  who  declared  and  believed  that  it 
was  the  true  George  Washington  from  nature.  Mr. 
Booth,  a  little  doubtful  of  the  fact  that  the  artist  had 
ever  seen  Washington,  was  too  generous  to  resist  the 
importunities  of  those  who  claimed  it  to  be  an  original, 
and,  in  his  ready  sympathy  with  all  whom  he  felt  to  be 


©ur  leaking  flftan  83 

in  want  of  money  and  help,  bought,  at  a  large  price, 
the  doubtful  painting. 

Apologising  once  to  a  party  of  his  friends  for  its 
presence  in  the  collection  of  pictures  devoted  solely  to 
members  of  his  own  profession,  he  said: 

"  I  don't  think  it  really  ought  to  be  where  it  is." 

Whereupon  Mr.  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  comforted 
the  protagonist  by  remarking  that  Washington  was,  at 
all  events,  "  our  leading  man." 

Booth  was  certainly  a  great  actor.  But  it  seems  to 
those  who  loved  him  best  and  who  knew  him  best  that 
he  was  a  better  man.  He  was  tried  by  domestic  sor 
rows  and  by  business  troubles  as  few  persons  have  been 
tried  ;  but  he  never  flinched,  he  never  lost  heart,  and 
he  never  spoke  bitterly  of  those  who  had  wronged  him 
most.  His  tenderness  was  exquisitely  human. 

Mr.  Jefferson,  his  successor  in  the  presidency  of  The 
Players  and  the  only  man  on  the  American  stage  to 
day  who  is  worthy  to  succeed  him,  spoke  of  Booth  in 
the  club  house  on  the  night  of  his  own  inaugural  in 
the  following  words:  "  But  a  few  years  ago  Booth 
although  rich  in  genius  was  poor  in  pocket.  He  had 
been  wealthy  and  he  saw  the  grand  dramatic  structure 
he  had  reared  taken  from  him  and  devastated.  His  re 
verse  of  fortune  was  from  no  fault  of  his  own,  but  from 
a  confiding  nature.  When  he  again,  by  arduous  toil, 
accumulated  wealth,  one  would  have  supposed  that  the 
thought  of  his  former  reverses  would  have  startled  him 
and  that  he  would  have  clutched  his  newly  acquired 


84  tTalfcs  in  a 


gold  and  garnered  it  to  himself,  fearful  lest  another 
stroke  of  ill  fortune  should  fall  upon  him.  But  instead 
of  making  him  a  coward  it  gave  him  courage.  It  did 
not  warp  his  mind  or  steel  his  heart  against  humanity. 
No  sterility  settled  upon  him.  His  wrongs  seemed  to 
have  fertilised  his  generosity  and  here  we  behold  the 
fruit.  .  .  .  The  walls  within  which  we  stand,  the 
art,  the  books,  and  the  comforts  that  surround  us,  re 
present  a  life  of  toil  and  travel,  sleepless  nights,  tedious 
journeys,  and  weary  work  ;  so  that  when  he  bestowed 
upon  us  this  club  it  was  not  his  wealth  only  but  it  was 
himself  he  gave  us.  ...  When  the  stranger  comes 
here  and  asks  us  for  the  monument  of  Kdwin  Booth 
we  can  truly  and  significantly  say,  '  Look  around 
you.'" 

It  has  been  said  that  Edwin  Booth  was  the  son  of  his 
father  ;  that  his  reputation  as  his  father's  son  was  not 
only  the  foundation,  but  the  greater  part,  of  the  reputa 
tion  he  built  for  himself  ;  that  all  he  knew  and  all  he 
was  came  from  the  father  whom  he  copied  so  carefully. 
In  his  own  defence,  perhaps,  he  wrote  in  an  article 
upon  the  elder  Kean  these  modest,  thoughtful  lines  : 
'  '  The  word  imitation  seems  to  be  used  as  a  slur  upon 
the  actor  alone.  The  painter  and  the  sculptor  go  to 
Italy  to  study  the  old  masters,  and  are  praised  for  their 
good  copies  after  this  or  that  one.  They  are  not  cen 
sured  for  imitation;  and  why  may  not  the  actor  also  have 
his  preceptor,  his  model  ?  Why  should  he  alone  be 
required  to  depart  from  the  traditions?  True,  other 


POSTER    PORTRAIT  OF  J.    WILKES   BOOTH 


ZTbeatrical  ftrabition  85 

artists  see  the  work  of  their  predecessors  and  can  retain 
or  reject  beauties  or  blemishes  at  will ;  but  the  actor 
relies  solely  on  uncertain  records  of  his  masters'  art 
and  thereby  is  frequently  misled  into  the  imitation  of 
faults  rather  than  into  the  emulation  of  virtues.  In 
the  main,  tradition  to  the  actor  is  as  true  as  that  which 
the  sculptor  perceives  in  Angelo,  the  painter  in  Ra 
phael,  and  the  musician  in  Beethoven  ;  all  these  artists 
have  sight  and  sound  to  guide  them.  I,  as  an  actor, 
know  that  if  I  could  sit  in  the  front  of  the  stage  and 
see  myself  at  work  I  would  condemn  much  that  has 
been  lauded  ;  and  correct  many  faults  which  I  feel  are 
mine  and  which  escape  the  critics'  notice.  But  I  can 
not  see  or  hear  my  mistakes  as  can  the  sculptor,  the 
painter,  the  writer,  and  the  musician.  Tradition,  if  it 
be  traced  through  pure  channels  and  to  the  fountain- 
head,  leads  one  as  near  to  Nature  as  can  be  followed  by 
her  servant,  Art.  Whatever  Quinn,  Barton  Booth, 
Garrick,  and  Cooke  gave  to  stagecraft,  or  as  we  now 
term  it,  "business,"  they  received  from  their  prede 
cessors  ;  from  Betterton  and  perhaps  from  Shakespeare 
himself  who,  though  not  distinguished  as  an  actor, 
well  knew  what  acting  should  be  ;  and  what  they  in 
herited  in  this  way  they  bequeathed  in  turn  to  their  art 
and  we  should  not  despise  it.  Kean  knew  without 
seeing  Cooke,  who  in  turn  knew  from  Macklin,  and  so 
back  to  Betterton,  just  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it. 
Their  great  Mother  Nature,  who  reiterates  her  teach 
ings  and  preserves  her  monotone  in  motion,  form,  and 


86  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

sound,  taught  them.     There  must  be  some  similitude 
in  all  things  that  are  True!  " 

And  in  writing  of  the  elder  Booth  he  said: 
[<  To  see  my  father  act,  when  in  the  acting  mood, 
was  not  '  like  reading  Shakespeare  by  flashes  of  light 
ning'  which  could  give  but  fitful  glimpses  of  the 
author's  meaning ;  but  the  full  sunlight  of  his  genius 
shone  on  every  character  that  he  portrayed  and  so 
illumined  the  obscurities  of  the  text  that  Shakespearians 
wondered  with  delight  at  his  lucid  interpretation  of 
passages  which  to  them  had  previously  been  unin 
telligible.  At  his  best  he  soared  higher  in  the  realm 
of  Art  than  any  one  of  his  successors  have  reached  ; 
and  to  those  who  saw  him  then  it  was  not  credible  that 
any  of  his  predecessors  could  have  surpassed  him. 
His  expression  of  terror  and  remorse  was  painful  in 
the  extreme,  his  hatred  and  revenge  were  devilish,  but 
his  tenderness  was  exquisitely  human." 

The  history  of  the  conception,  the  birth,  and  the 
baptism  of  The  Players  has  never  been  fully  told  in 
print.  Booth  had  long  desired  to  do  something  in  a 
tangible  and  in  an  enduring  way  for  the  good  of  his 
profession ;  and  various  schemes  were  fully  discussed 
during  a  fortnight's  cruise  on  the  steam-yacht  Oneida 
in  the  summer  of  1886.  The  party  consisted  of  Mr.  K. 
C.  Benedict,  the  owner  of  the  beautiful  vessel,  Mr. 
Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  L,awrence  Barrett,  Mr.  William 
Bispham,  Booth,  and  myself.  Booth's  first  and  original 
idea  was  to  found  and  endow  some  sort  of  an  Actors' 


ORIGINAL   "PLAYERS"    ON  YACHT 


©right  of  £be  placers          87 

House  or  Home,  with  sleeping-rooms,  waiting-rooms, 
a  restaurant,  and  the  like  ;  where  strangers  in  New 
York  could  find  a  lodging  ;  and  where  residents  could 
assemble  whenever  they  were  so  disposed  ;  where  the 
old  could  find  a  resting-place ;  the  sick  could  find 
shelter  and  a  doctor's  care ;  and  the  poor  could  find 
help  and  comfort.  The  arguments  against  this  were  as 
many  as  were  those  in  its  favour.  It  did  not  seem  alto 
gether  possible.  The  difficulties,  as  they  were  pointed 
out  to  him,  were  almost  insurmountable;  and  with  great 
reluctance  he  finally  abandoned  the  idea.  The  notion 
of  a  club  for  actors  was  then  proposed.  Mr.  Aldrich 
with  a  peculiarly  happy  inspiration  suggested  its  name, 
* '  The  Players, ' '  and  the  general  plan  of  the  organisa 
tion  was  gradually  outlined.  Curiously  enough  the 
whole  thing  was  based  upon  the  name.  The  idea  was 
so  good  that  Mr.  Booth  felt  he  could  not  let  it  pass,  and 
upon  the  name,  which  became  the  corner-stone,  was 
the  edifice  erected.  By  no  other  name  could  it  have 
smelled  so  sweet  in  the  donor's  generous  nostrils  ;  and 
if  Mr.  Aldrich  had  not  thought  of  a  name  for  it  before 
it  was  thought  of  itself,  The  Players  perhaps  would 
never  have  existed  ;  and  Booth's  beneficence  would  per 
haps  have  taken  some  other  form.  After  our  return  to 
New  York  in  the  autumn  a  number  of  Booth's  friends 
were  taken  into  his  confidence, — Augustin  Daly,  Mr.  A. 
M.  Palmer,  among  the  managers;  Mr.  Joseph  Jefferson, 
Harry  Kdwards,  Florence,  Mr.  John  Drew,  James 
lyewis,  John  A.  L,ane,  among  the  actors ;  Mr.  Brander 


88  £aifcs  in  a  library 

Matthews,  Mr.  Mark  Twain,  among  the  writers  ;  Gen 
eral  Sherman,  Judge  Joseph  F.  Daly,  Mr.  Stephen  H. 
Olin,  Mr.  Charles  E.  Carry  1,  among  the  sympathisers 
with  the  stage ;  and  so  by  them  The  Players  was  in 
augurated  early  in  January,  1888.  Prominent  persons 
in  all  the  kindred  professions  were  nominated  as  mem 
bers.  The  house  No.  16  Gramercy  Park  was  pur 
chased  by  Booth  and  at  his  expense  it  was  almost 
entirely  rebuilt  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Stanford 
White,  one  of  the  original  Players.  And  on  the  first 
Founders'  Night,  the  3ist  of  December,  1888,  he  trans 
ferred  it  all  to  the  Association,  a  munificent  gift  abso 
lutely  without  parallel  in  its  way.  The  pleasure  it 
gave  to  Booth  during  the  few  remaining  years  of  his 
life  was  very  great.  He  made  it  his  home.  Next  to 
his  own  immediate  family  it  was  his  chief  interest,  care, 
and  consolation.  He  nursed  and  petted  it  as  it  nursed 
and  petted  and  honoured  him.  He  died  in  it.  And  it 
is  certainly  his  greatest  monument. 

As  he  passed  away  on  that  sad  June  night  all  the 
electric  lamps  in  the  Club  House  were  suddenly  extin 
guished.  And  we,  at  The  Players,  are  still  in  darkness. 

The  sudden  death  of  Lawrence  Barrett  was  a  great 
shock  and  a  great  surprise  to  Booth.  His  friend  had 
recovered  from  the  serious  operation  performed  a  year 
or  two  before  and  he  was  seemingly  in  robust  strength, 
likely  long  to  outlive  Booth,  who  was  beginning  to  be 
come  conscious  of  his  own  physical  decay.  They  were 
playing  together  a  successful  engagement  in  New  York 


Bootb's  Xa0t  Engagement       89 

when  Barrett  was  taken  ill  one  night  and  was  obliged 
to  leave  the  theatre  before  the  close  of  the  performance. 
The  next  night  he  did  not  appear  and  the  third  night 
his  name  was  taken  out  of  the  bill.  Booth,  who  had 
no  thought  of  anything  serious,  asked  Mr.  Bromley, 
the  manager,  to  call  at  the  Windsor  Hotel  and  see  how 
"L,awrence  was  getting  on."  An  hour  later  Booth 
was  sitting  at  his  supper  of  bread  and  milk  in  the  grill 
room  of  The  Players  when  Mr.  Bromley  entered  and 
said,  simply  and  seriously,  "  Mr.  Barrett  has  gone." 
Booth,  still  suspecting  nothing,  asked,  "Where  to?" 
supposing  that  Mrs.  Barrett  had  carried  her  husband 
off  to  their  home  in  Boston.  He  was  naturally  very 
much  depressed  for  some  time.  Indeed,  he  never  fully 
recovered  from  the  blow.  He  closed  his  theatre  at 
once,  although  he  continued  the  salaries  of  his  com 
pany  ;  and  finally  he  played  a  short  engagement  in 
Brooklyn,  which  proved,  as  so  many  of  his  friends 
feared  it  would  prove,  to  be  his  last. 


CHAPTER  IV 

Joseph  Jefferson— Lawrence  Barrett— Lester  Wallack— Henry 
J.  Montague— "Billy"  Florence— John  McCullough— Mrs. 
Keeley — Mrs.  Maeder. 

IN  the  spring  of  1903,  Mr.  Jefferson  wrote  to  me : 

' '  MY  DEAR  LAURENCE  : 

"  When  John  L.  Sullivan,  the  prize  fighter,  heard  of 
the  death  of  Edwin  Booth,  he  exclaimed:  '  It 's  a  great 
loss  ;  there  are  a  damned  few  of  us  left. ' 

"  This  is  why  I  address  you  as  '  Dear  Laurence,'  and 
why  I  would  have  you  address  me  as  '  Dear  Joe,'  be 
cause  *  there  are  a  damned  few  of  us  left. '  I  have  made 
a  contract  with  Tom  Aldrich  to  do  the  same.  So  many 
old  friends  have  gone  on  the  long  journey  that  it  is 
pleasant  to  me  to  hear  myself  called  '  Joe. ' 

"  Mrs.  Jefferson  joins  me  in  regards  to  yourself  and 
Mrs.  Hutton. 

4 '  Sincerely  yours, 

"JOE." 

Mr.  Jefferson  is  distinguished,  as  are  a  good  many 
men  of  distinction,  by  his  absolute  forgetfulness  of  the 
names  of  the  many  men  with  whom,  in  his  long  career, 
he  has  been  brought  in  personal  contact.  He  knows 

90 


Jefferson  anb  (Brant  91 

faces — or  thinks  he  does — but  it  is  very  difficult  for  him 
to  apply  the  appellation  to  which  the  face  belongs.  As 
he  himself  says  : 

"  Everybody  knows  '  Tom  Fool,'  but  how  can  *  Tom 
Fool '  be  expected  to  know  everybody  ?  ' ' 

He  is  fond  of  telling  how,  on  one  occasion,  he  had 
a  little  business  to  attend  to  on  the  top  floor  of  one  of 
the  very  tall  buildings  in  the  lower  part  of  New  York 
City.  Entering  the  descending  elevator  he  found  a 
certain  man  who  greeted  him  cordially,  with  whose 
face  he  was  perfectly  familiar  but  whose  name  he  could 
not  remember.  He  was  peculiarly  struck  by  the  fact 
that  the  stranger  was  a  stranger  to  no  one  else  in  the 
car ;  that  everybody  looked  upon  him  with  a  certain 
respect ;  and  that  he  was  smoking  a  very  strong  and 
black  cigar  contrary  to  the  printed  rules  before  him. 
Mr.  Jefferson  noticed,  also,  that  neither  the  stranger's 
hat  nor  his  boots  were  brushed  ;  that  his  clothes  were 
not  particularly  well  cut  nor  well  made  ;  and  that  at 
the  bottom  of  his  trousers  hung  certain  tape  strings 
with  which  his  unmentionable  underclothes  should 
have  been  tied,  but  which  had  got  loose  and  were  drag 
ging  at  his  heels.  He  said: 

"  Mr.  Jefferson,  you  don't  remember  me?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  remember  you  perfectly.  The  last  time 
I  saw  you  was  in  the  far  West.  We  had  some  talk, 
but  I — really — can't  recollect  your  name." 

The  stranger  said : 

"  I  am  General  Grant!" 


92  Galfcs  in  a  library 

"And  then,"  I  asked  Mr.  Jefferson,  when  he  told  me 
the  story,  "  what  did  you  do  then,  sir?" 

He  replied,  with  the  famous  little  twinkle  of  his  eye: 

11  Why,  I  got  out  of  the  car  at  the  next  stop  and 
walked  down  four  flights  of  stairs  for  fear  I  'd  ask  him 
if  he  had  ever  been  in  the  War  !  " 

Mr.  Jefferson  said  to  me  once : 

' '  You  told  me  about  your  magazine  articles  on  the 
three  Italian  cities  and  about  the  pleasure  you  had  in 
writing  them.  You  said  they  were  coming  out  in  the 
Magazine  (Harper's) — but  I  have  never  seen  them." 

I  replied: 

"  They  will  appear,  Mr.  Jefferson,  some  time  during 
the  coming  spring." 

' '  But  you  finished  them  at  least  a  year  ago  !  Do 
you  mean  to  tell  me  that  you  writing-fellows  have  got 
to  wait  so  long  for  your  round  of  applause  ?  Why,  if 
we  acting-fellows  don't  get  a  '  hand '  when  we  make 
our  point,  we  feel  that  our  point  is  n't  made ;  and  we 
can't  understand  your  sitting  for  so  long  a  time  with 
out  knowing,  by  visible  demonstration,  whether  you  've 
made  your  hit  or  not." 

A  letter  dated  July  5th,  of  the  same  year,  was  written 
by  him  from  Buzzard's  Bay: 

"  I  regret  that  I  did  not  know  in  time  that  you  were 
taking  a  trip  to  England  .  .  .  Well,  our  glorious 
Fourth  of  July  is  over  and,  thank  God,  all  of  my  grand 
children  are  still  in  possession  of  their  fingers  and  eyes. 


Ibumour  of  3effer$on        93 


I  am  fairly  patriotic,  but  I  look  upon  the  lively  fire 
cracker  as  an  invention  of  the  devil. 

"You  may  sweep  up  the  d&bris  as  much  as  you  will, 
But  the  scab  of  the  cracker  will  hang  round  it  still. 

"  You  are  sure  to  see  Sir  Henry  [Irving].  Tell  him, 
if  j'ou  will,  that  he  is  remembered  here  with  much 
affection  and  give  him  my  love  and  respect.  I  hope 
that  he  and  I  will  act  together  in  the  other  world  if  not 
in  this. 

"  And  on  that  last  day  when  we  leave  those  we  love 

And  move  in  a  mournful  procession, 
I  hope  we  '11  both  play  star  engagements  above, 

For  I  'in  sure  they  '11  '  admit  the  profession.' 
For  myself,  when  I  knock  at  the  gate  with  some  fear, 

I  know  that  St.  Peter  will  say  : 
'  Walk  in,  Young  Comedian,  and  act  with  us  here, 

But  for  heaven's  sake,  get  a  new  play  !  ' 

"  Kver  thine, 


Eminently  characteristic  of  Mr.  Jefferson's  quaint 
and  ready  humour  was  his  identification  of  me  at  an 
hotel  in  Boston.  We  had  arrived  at  the  establishment 
late  one  Saturday  afternoon  ;  the  banks  and  banking 
houses  were  closed  ;  and  most  of  my  friends  were  scat 
tered  among  the  suburbs  or  at  the  far  end  of  the  town 
when  I  discovered  that  I  had  not  money  enough  in  my 
pocket  to  carry  me  over  Sunday;  and  I  asked  the  clerk 
of  the  hotel  if  he  would  not  cash  a  check.  He  said  that 
it  was  entirely  against  the  rules  of  the  establishment  to 


94  ftalfcs  in  a  librar? 

pass  out  any  money  to  a  man  who  was  not  personally 
known.  That,  while  he  had  no  doubt  that  my  check 
was  a  good  one,  he  would  lose  his  situation,  even  if  the 
draft  were  honoured.  All  that  was  necessary  was  a 
personal  identification. 

At  that  moment  I  saw  Mr.  Jefferson  in  the  lobby  and 
asked  if  his  word  would  be  enough.  The  reply  was 
emphatically  in  the  affirmative.  So  I  told  the  genial 
comedian  what  the  trouble  was,  and  what  I  wanted 
him  to  do.  He  put  his  arm  over  my  shoulder  and 
marching  up  to  the  cashier's  desk,  remarked,  "  I  don't 
know  who  Laurence  says  he  is,  but  he  's  the  man!  " 

Lawrence  Barrett,  in  1879  or  in  1880,  wrote  The  Life 
of  Forrest  for  "  The  American  Actor  Series,"  of  which 
I  was  the  editor.  Barrett  wrote  rapidly,  fluently,  and 
eloquently,  but  very  indistinctly  and  very  illegibly. 
As  he  travelled  about,  filling  his  professional  engage 
ments,  he  sent  to  me  the  manuscript  of  the  work  chap 
ter  by  chapter  ;  and  by  me  his  "copy  "  was  deciphered 
and  recopied  for  the  printers.  One  particular  para 
graph  about  Forrest's  "red-handed  democracy" — he 
was  a  Democrat  in  politics — seemed  to  me  to  have  no 
meaning.  Barrett,  then  in  the  far  South,  was  asked 
by  letter  to  explain  it.  He  replied  in  a  joking  way 
that  he  could  not  explain  it ;  that  it  was  not  his  busi 
ness  to  explain  anything  or  to  make  clear  what  he  had 
written  ;  that  such  things  were  solely  in  the  province 
of  his  editor.  Even  when  he  reached  New  York  and 
saw  his  own  manuscript  he  could  not  interpret  the 


Barrett^  Hntecebettte  95 

sentence.  Finally  he  was  asked  to  read  aloud  the 
entire  paragraph  that  he  might  gather  from  the  context 
what  he  really  intended  to  say  ;  and  lo,  his  *  *  red- 
handed  democracy"  was  discovered  to  be  his  "all- 
powerful  rival  Macready!  " — the  only  self-evident  letter 
being  the  final  "y"  which  is  common  to  both  readings. 

Barrett  was  absolutely  and  entirely  self-educated  and 
self-made.  He  came  of  simple,  plain,  honest  Irish 
parents  and  he  was  never  ashamed  of  them  or  of  the 
facts  of  his  birth.  He  never  pretended  to  be  anything 
more  than  he  was ;  and  he  was  always  ready  to  speak 
of  his  early  struggles  and  disadvantages.  A  report 
that  his  real  name  was  ( '  Larry  Brannigan ' '  annoyed 
him  beyond  measure.  How  it  originated  he  never 
knew,  but  it  was  constantly  repeated  in  the  newspapers 
all  over  the  country  and  no  denial  on  his  part  could 
suppress  the  falsehood.  When  a  History  of  the  Albany 
Stage  published  the  mis-statement,  he  wrote  to  the 
author  a  dignified  letter  explaining  the  matter,  and 
a  correction  and  apology  were  made  at  once. 

His  father,  as  he  often  told  me,  was  Patrick  Barrett, 
an  Irish  emigrant  who  never  rose  very  high  in  the  social 
scale.  His  mother  was  a  hard-working  woman,  whom 
he  never  forgot,  and  of  whom  he  always  spoke  with  the 
greatest  affection  and  regard.  He  was  a  seven-months' 
child,  with  a  preternaturally  large  head  which  was  so 
heavy  that  he  could  not  walk  until  he  was  quite  a  lad. 
He  often  told  his  friends  and  never  with  the  slightest 
sentiment  of  shame  how  his  mother  wiped  the  suds  from 


96  ZTalfce  in  a  library 

her  arms  and  left  her  wash-tub  to  carry  him  to  the  little 
school  where  he  was  taught  his  letters ;  coming  back 
for  him  and  carrying  him  home  again  when  the  proper 
time  arrived.  His  father  seems  to  have  been  a  very 
severe  man  ;  and  when  the  lad  was  ten  years  old,  very 
slight  and  frail,  he  ran  away  from  home,  concealing 
himself  under  the  seat  of  the  "  buggy  "  of  a  travelling 
cattle-dealer  and  not  discovering  himself  until  it  was 
too  late  to  send  him  back.  He  found  employment  in  a 
hotel  in  a  Western  city  and  later  he  became  call-boy  in 
a  Western  theatre.  Here  he  made  friends  with  the 
property-man,  who  gave  him  the  ends  of  the  unused 
candles,  which  he  took  to  his  garret  and  stuck  into  nails 
driven  in  the  floor,  because  the  lights  were  too  short  to 
burn  long  enough  in  the  bottles  which  were  his  only 
candelabra.  By  the  uncertain  flame  of  these  "  dips,'' 
lying  on  his  stomach  on  the  carpetless  planks,  he 
studied  an  old  copy  of  Webster's  Dictionary,  which 
formed  his  entire  libraty.  I  have  heard  him  tell  all 
this  to  a  President  of  the  United  States  in  the  White 
House  and  in  the  presence  of  foreign  Ministers  and 
Secretaries  of  State  and  their  wives  and  daughters,  as 
simply  as  if  he  were  boasting  of  the  claims  of  long  de 
scent.  And  to  prove  how  familiar  he  was  with  his  only 
juvenile  book,  I  have  heard  him  repeat  and  spell  and 
define  obsolete  and  obsolescent  words  which  the  very 
first  page  of  that  dictionary  contains. 

Barrett  was  sometimes  imperious,   hot-headed,   im 
pulsive,   quick   to  anger,  often   unjust ;   but  he  was 


Difference  witb  Barrett         97 

always  ready  to  confess  himself  in  the  wrong  and  to 
make  amends.  For  years  I  saw  much  of  him  in  his 
own  family  circle  and  in  mine,  at  home  and  abroad,  in 
Paris,  London,  in  Cohasset,  in  Boston,  and  in  New 
York,  but  I  saw  very  little  in  him  that  I  could  not  re 
spect  and  admire.  We  had  but  two  approaches  to  a 
quarrel  and  each  of  them  very  quickly  came  to  naught. 
In  the  beginning  of  our  acquaintance  Barrett  wrote 
something  in  his  Forrest  which,  as  the  responsible 
editor,  I  could  not  accept.  The  author  resented  what 
seemed  to  him  to  be  an  unwarranted  interference  with 
his  manuscript  and,  after  some  correspondence,  I  went 
to  see  him  in  Baltimore  where  he  was  then  playing. 
The  matter  was  talked  over  at  breakfast  on  the  morn 
ing  of  my  arrival.  The  editor  insisted  upon  the  re 
moval  of  the  obnoxious  paragraph  ;  the  author  insisted 
upon  its  retention.  He  was  firm  ;  I  was  equally  firm. 
He  said  he  would  print  the  chapter  exactly  as  it  stood 
or  he  would  not  print  it  at  all.  I  was  sorry,  very  sorry, 
but  I  could  not  comply.  Barrett  threw  the  manuscript 
upon  the  table  with  an  impatient  exclamation  and 
walked  towards  the  window  in  suggestive  silence.  In 
a  moment  he  came  back  to  where  I  was  sitting,  equally 
silent,  and  with  a  half-smile  on  his  face  he  said,  simply: 
"Old  Cassius  still !  " — held  out  his  hand  to  me,  tore  up 
the  disputed  pages,  and  never  alluded  to  the  matter 
again. 

He  often  used  to  say  that  there  was  a  great  deal  of 
the  character  of  Cassius  in  his  own  composition  ;  and 

7 


98  ftalfcs  in  a 


that  because  lie  was  Cassius  he  felt  that  he  played 
Cassius  better  than  any  other  part.  Mr.  Millet's  por 
trait  of  Barrett  as  the  lean  and  hungry  Roman  con 
spirator  has,  by  the  way,  a  curious  history.  It  was 
painted  in  New  York  and  it  was  exhibited  in  the  Royal 
Academy  in  London,  where  it  received  no  little  praise. 
Barrett  proposed  to  present  it  to  the  Garrick  Club,  of 
which  he  was  a  member  (this  was  long  before  The 
Players  came  into  existence),  but,  as  it  was  being 
transferred  from  Burlington  House  to  what  was  in 
tended  to  be  its  final  home  in  Garrick  Street,  London, 
it  mysteriously  disappeared  and  has  never  been  seen 
nor  heard  of  since  and  its  present  whereabouts  have 
never  been  traced.  The  original  study  for  it,  a  small 
sketch  in  oils  given  to  me  by  the  painter  many  years 
ago,  is  still  in  my  possession  and  is  all  that  is  left  of 
the  portrait  which  Barrett  intended  to  be  his  monu 
ment  in  the  Westminster  Abbey  of  British  Players. 

Towards  the  very  close  of  Barrett's  life  came  our  sec 
ond  serious  disagreement.  He  was  dining  with  us  one 
Sunday  evening  when  he  made  some  severe  strictures 
upon  a  certain  clergyman  of  New  York  of  whom  per 
sonally  he  knew  nothing,  but  whom  for  some  unex 
plained  reason  he  did  not  like.  I  replied  at  length: 
"  I  wish  you  would  not  say  these  things,  Lawrence,  — 
they  hurt  me.  The  Doctor  was  a  very  good  friend  to 
me  when  I  most  needed  friends,  and  when  you  were  far 
away.  He  came  to  me  at  the  time  of  the  mother's 
death,  although  I  had  no  claim  upon  him  whatever, 


JDeatb  of  Barrett          99 


and  he  was  everything  that  a  friend  and  a  clergyman 
could  have  been.  He  buried  the  mother  and  I  cannot 
bear  to  hear  you  speak  of  him  as  you  do  !  " 

The  subject  was  dropped  at  once  ;  but  the  next 
morning  Barrett  called  to  express  his  sincere  sorrow  for 
his  thoughtless  remarks.  This  was  the  last  time  he 
entered  our  doors.  I  saw  him  on  the  Wednesday  of 
the  same  week,  two  days  before  his  death,  in  his  own 
room  at  the  Windsor  Hotel  in  New  York,  where  he  was 
peculiarly  happy  and  well.  He  was  looking  over  the 
settings  and  designs  for  the  costuming  of  a  new  play 
with  Mr.  Edward  Hamilton-Bell,  a  native  of  England. 
It  chanced  to  be  the  iyth  of  March,  St.  Patrick's  Day, 
and  whenever  a  regiment  of  soldiers  or  a  benevolent 
society  passed  under  his  window  playing  the  Wearing 
of  the  Green  or  some  other  national  Irish  air,  he  would 
jump  to  his  feet,  clap  his  hands,  and  shout  "  Old  Ire 
land  forever  !  "  or  "  Those  are  the  boys  to  make  Eng 
land  quail."  He  was  taken  ill  that  night  at  the 
theatre.  When  I  called  on  the  Friday  evening  to  ask 
about  him,  he  was  too  ill  for  me  to  see  him,  and  he 
died  quietly  on  his  wife's  breast  before  morning.  The 
object  of  my  visit  on  that  Wednesday  had  been  to  get 
him  to  ask  permission  from  the  family  of  General 
Sherman  to  add  the  death-mask  of  the  old  soldier  to 
my  collection. 

Barrett  was  a  man  of  very  warm  and  tender  affection. 
Entire  harmony  existed  between  him  and  his  family 
and  it  was  very  beautiful  to  see  them  together.  His 


ioo  Ealfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

affection  for  and  devotion  to  my  mother  touched  me 
always  as  it  touched  her.  He  spoke  of  himself  in 
variably  as  "  One  of  her  boys."  Many  years  her 
junior  he  kissed  her  respectfully  and  affectionately  as 
they  met  and  parted.  He  held  her  hand  if  by  chance 
they  sat  together  at  table  or  elsewhere  ;  and  of  all  the 
letters  which  came  to  me  at  the  time  of  her  death  none 
was  more  tender  and  sympathetic  than  Barrett's.  The 
last  time  she  left  the  house  she  went  to  see  him  play 
The  Man  d1  Airlie,  and  when  after  the  performance  he 
entered  the  box  he  had  reserved  for  her,  she  handed 
him  to  wear  in  his  dress  of  the  character  a  large  silver 
Scottish  brooch  on  which  she  had  had  engraved — * '  To 
the  Man  o'  Airlie  from  the  Boy's  Mother  and  the  Boy." 
This  brooch,  given  to  me  by  Mrs.  Barrett  after  her 
husband's  death,  is  now  one  of  my  most  cherished 
possessions.  The  filial  love  which  Barrett  felt  for  my 
mother  he  transferred  in  a  fraternal  and,  of  course,  in 
a  less  demonstrative  way  to  my  wife.  He  seemed  to 
feel  that  we  belonged  to  him  somehow,  and  that  some 
how  he  belonged  to  us.  He  spoke  to  us  in  the  freest 
and  most  confidential  manner  about  his  own  affairs, 
personal  and  professional.  We  went  to  see  him  in 
Boston  very  soon  after  the  severe  operation  for  glandu 
lar  swelling  was  performed.  He  was  propped  up  care 
fully  in  his  bed  and  he  was  in  the  wildest  of  good 
spirits  at  the  result,  which  was  entirely  successful  as  he 
thought,  but  which  we  and  one  or  two  more  of  his  in 
timate  friends  knew  was  of  temporary  value  only.  He 


a  Christening  101 

told  how  he  had  prepared  himself  for  the  operation, 
how  he  had  dreaded  it,  how  he  had  braced  himself  up  to 
meet  it,  how  he  had  met  it,  how  the  anaesthetics  were 
applied,  how  he  imagined  that  they  had  had  no  effect 
until  some  time  afterwards  he  had  found  himself  in  his 
wife's  arms  and  was  told  that  it  was  "  all  right. "  "And 
then,"  he  said,  "  I  just  put  my  head  on  Mollie's  [Mrs. 
Barrett's]  bosom  and  cried  like  a  baby."  To  those 
of  us  who  had  been  told  that  the  trouble  would  re 
turn  and  ultimately  kill  him,  perhaps  in  year  or  two, 
all  this  self-congratulation  of  his  was  very  pathetic. 
Happily  he  did  not  learn  the  truth  and  he  died  sud 
denly  of  pneumonia,  never  realising  that  the  end  was 
near.  O  for  the  blessing  of  the  sudden  death,  against 
the  dangers  of  which  the  Churchmen  pray! 

Barrett  and  I  were  in  London  together  one  summer 
when  Mrs.  Frank  Millet  was  delivered  there  of  a  son. 
The  child  was  to  be  named  "  Lawrence  "  and  we  went 
with  Mr.  Millet  to  the  vestry  house  of  St.  Mary's,  Ken 
sington,  in  which  parish  the  child  was  born,  to  register 
the  birth.  The  parish-clerk  was  a  little  man,  slightly 
deformed  and  partly  deaf;  and  we  found  him  perched 
upon  a  high  stool  before  a  high  desk,  and  with  abso 
lutely  no  experience  of  the  world  outside  his  own 
parish  and  the  parish  work.  The  usual  questions 
were  asked  and  answered,  and  finally  the  name  of  the 
child. 

"  Lawrence,"  said  the  father. 

11  L-a-w-r-e-n-c-e,"  said  Barrett,  spelling  the  word  at 


102  aaifce  in  a  Xibrarp 

length  in  his  most  formidable  high  tragedy  voice  and 
with  a  very  strong  accent  on  the  "  w." 

"Pardon  me,"  said  I,  "  L-a-u-r-e-n-c-e,  if  you 
please,"  with  the  accent  on  the  "u." 

"  L,-a-ze>,"  shouted  Barrett. 

"  L-a-#,"  insisted  I. 

And  the  poor  little  official  laid  down  his  quill-pen  in 
inexpressible  amazement.  What  seemed  to  him  an 
actual  fight  was  imminent.  Such  a  condition  of  things 
he  had  never  experienced  or  dreamed  of  before.  He 
felt  that  such  a  scene  had  never  occurred  in  any  parish 
house  in  all  England  since  the  days  of  the  Protectorate, 
and  what  it  all  meant  he  could  not  comprehend.  Bar 
rett  still  demanded  the  ;'ze/"  (his  own  spelling  of  the 
name),  I  as  urgently  maintained  that  the  "u"  must  be 
used  (as  it  is  spelled  in  my  name).  The  clerk  was  on 
the  point  of  fainting  or  calling  the  police,  when  Mr. 
Millet  in  his  quiet  way  came  to  the  rescue. 

"  It  appears  to  me,"  he  exclaimed,  "  that  in  a  case 
of  this  kind  the  father  of  the  child  should  have  some  - 
thing  to  say.  I  never  interfered  with  the  naming  of 
any  of  your  babies,  did  I?"  Then  turning  to  the 
clerk,  he  said,  "  Spell  him  with  a  '  v.'  " 

And  L,az/rence  Millet  he  is  by  law  to  this  day. 

With  Barrett  and  James  R.  Osgood,  the  publisher,  a 
dear  friend  to  us  both,  I  spent  a  very  happy  week  once 
at  Maidenhead  on  the  Thames.  We  engaged  a  sitting- 
room  and  three  bedrooms  in  a  pleasant  little  inn  and 
thoroughly  enjoyed  the  rest  and  quiet.  On  the  morn- 


Hn  Erratic  XanMorb  103 

ing  of  our  arrival  our  little  parlour  was  invaded  by  a 
wild-eyed,  queer- mannered  personage  who  played  on 
our  piano,  although  he  was  informed  that  the  room 
was  private,  and  who  did  other  offensive  and  familiar 
things.  Barrett  finally  ordered  him  out  in  his  very 
severest  tone  and  rang  the  bell  to  complain  to  the  land 
lord.  The  frightened  and  apologetic  waiter  informed 
us  that  the  intruder  was  the  landlord,  who  had  had  a 
sunstroke  and  was  not  responsible  for  his  actions. 
Sorry  for  our  brusqueness,  Barrett  and  the  rest  of  us 
went  out  upon  the  lawn  after  luncheon  to  make  amends 
to  the  harmless  creature  whom  we  saw  busily  employed 
there.  As  we  approached  him  we  discovered  that  he 
was  twirling  around  his  head  a  long,  heavy,  sharp- 
pointed  crowbar,  with  which,  he  told  us,  he  was  trying 
to  see  how  near  he  could  come  to  hitting  a  certain  rose 
bush  across  the  bit  of  lawn.  He  asked  us  to  join  him 
in  his  cheerful  game.  But  we  scattered  as  silently  and 
as  quickly  as  possible  in  every  direction  except  the 
direction  of  the  rosebush,  to  join  each  other  an  hour 
later  on  the  banks  of  the  river  half  a  mile  away. 

During  this  same  season,  in  the  summer  or  autumn 
of  1884,  while  Barrett  was  playing  an  engagement  at 
one  of  the  London  theatres,  I  dropped  into  his  dressing- 
room  after  an  evening's  performance  and  together  we 
went  to  a  theatrical  club — the  "Green  Room,"  I  think 
— for  a  bit  of  supper.  We  found  ourselves  seated  at  a 
large  table,  one  on  each  side  of  L,ord  Houghton,  who 
presided  in  an  informal  way  over  the  symposium.  He 


104  Galfce  in  a  Xibrar\> 

was  then  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  garrulous,  feeble 
in  body,  but  perfectly  clear  in  mind.  He  was  in  a 
reminiscent  mood  that  night  and  he  told  many  stories 
of  the  stage  as  he  remembered  it  in  the  days  of  his 
youth.  Most  interesting  to  his  two  immediate  neigh 
bours  was  his  talk  until  Barrett  finally  asked  which 
actor,  take  him  all  in  all,  he  thought  was  the  greatest 
he  had  ever  seen  ;  expecting  him  to  reply  "  Kean," 
perhaps,  or  "John  Philip  Kemble,"  and  thereby  evolv 
ing  a  fresh  stream  of  recollections.  But  he  said,  "  I 
remember  asking  Sam  Rogers  once  that  very  question, 
and  hearing  him  declare  that  nobody  he  had  ever  seen 
could  begin  to  compare  with  David  Garrick  ! ' ' 

This  was  startling  indeed.  There  were  we  drinking 
in  the  words  of  a  man  who  knew  the  Rogers  who  had 
seen  Garrick  play ;  and  Garrick  had  died  over  a  cent 
ury  before.  And  then,  to  go  even  further  back,  Garrick 
no  doubt  had  seen  Barton  Booth  ;  Booth  was  familiar 
with  Betterton  ;  Betterton  was  in  Davenant's  company; 
and  Davenant  was,  perhaps,  the  son  of  Shakespeare  ! 
We  were  ourselves  a  link  in  a  chain  only  seven  links 
distant  from  Shakespeare  himself. 

Barrett,  particularly,  was  enormously  impressed.  It 
was  the  passing  along  of  the  famous  handshake,  in  his 
own  case.  There  were  only  half  a  baker's  dozen  of 
men  between  him  and  the  Immortal  Dramatist,  the 
Greatest  Giant  of  them  all.  He  was  very  fond  of  tell 
ing  the  story,  saying  sometimes  that  it  was  too  good  to 
be  true. 


(Barricfc's  Xaet  appearance      105 

It  was  too  good  to  be  true.  Rogers  may  have  seen 
Garrick,  for  he  was  sixteen  when  Garrick  quitted  the 
stage  of  life,  but  he  never  saw  Garrick  play  ;  and  he 
has  told  us  so  himself.  In  his  Table  Talk  there  is  an 
account  of  Garrick' s  last  public  appearance  as  an  actor  ; 
of  the  universal  sensation  the  event  of  his  farewell 
created ;  of  the  lad  Rogers  standing  for  long  hours  in 
the  line  of  patient  waiters  for  admission  at  the  entrance 
to  the  pit ;  of  the  greatness  and  the  good-humoured 
roughness  of  the  enthusiastic  crowds  ;  and  of  the  boy's 
very  bitter  disappointment  when  the  doors  were  opened 
to  find  his  poor  weak  little  body  hustled  out  of  its 
place  and  to  find  himself  left  crushed  and  disheartened 
in  the  street  without  even  a  glimpse  of  the  inside  of  the 
house.  He  lingered  long  enough  to  catch  a  murmur 
of  applause.  That  was  something.  And  then  he  went 
sadly  home. 

I  never  had  the  heart  to  tell  Barrett  that  his  golden 
chain  was  broken.  And  he  has  gone  now  to  solve  the 
great  problem  and,  I  hope,  to  meet  Shakespeare  and 
Garrick  and  Rogers  face  to  face. 

When  L,ester  Wallack  retired  from  the  stage  he  was 
asked  to  write  his  reminiscences  and  he  consented  on 
the  one  condition  that  I  should  be  his  editor.  The  task 
was  not  to  my  liking  and  I  hesitated  for  some  time, 
finally  consenting,  at  his  own  and  his  publisher's 
urgent  request.  The  old  actor  took  a  little  suite  of 
apartments  in  Thirty- fourth  Street,  New  York,  so  as  to 
be  near  me,  and  during  the  long  winter  I  spent  three 


106  Galfce  in  a  %ibran> 

nights  a  week  in  his  room.  It  was  discovered  in  the 
beginning  that  he  had  not  put  a  word  to  paper,  was 
too  feeble  to  write,  and  that  he  had  but  a  vague  notion 
of  what  he  was  to  say.  A  stenographer  was  employed 
to  set  down  everything  that  Wallack  uttered.  I 
prompted  the  old  actor  with  a  judicious  question  now 
and  then  ;  and  his  talk  with  an  old  and  sympathetic 
playgoer  was  as  entertaining  as  any  to  which  I  ever 
listened.  But  unluckily  very  much  of  it  could  not  be 
transcribed,  not  because  it  was  improper  in  any  way, 
but  because  it  could  not  be  used  as  literature.  After 
each  evening  the  stenographer  read  his  notes  and 
made  a  type-written  copy  of  what  I  wished  him  to 
preserve.  These,  after  I  had  gone  through  with  them, 
were  sent  to  Wallack  for  final  revision.  He  read  and 
corrected  the  first  article  in  proof  but  he  died  before 
the  second  was  printed.  Fortunately  he  had  dictated 
enough  material  for  three  papers  in  Scribner" s  Maga 
zine.  These  I  prepared  for  the  press  and  printed  later 
in  book  form  with  an  introductory  Memoir  of  L,ester 
Wallack. 

I  very  soon  learned  to  like  ' €  The  Governor  "  as  he 
was  called  on  his  own  stage  and  in  his  own  family  ; 
and  I  am  glad  to  think,  from  our  personal  intercourse 
and  from  the  few  letters  he  wrote,  that  the  feeling  was 
mutual.  His  wife,  and  sometimes  his  sons  and  their 
wives,  were  present  on  these  evenings  ;  and  Mrs.  Wal 
lack  offered  many  useful  and  valuable  suggestions  as 
to  what  he  should  say  concerning  his  experiences,  early 


letter  Udallacfc  107 

and  late.  He  had  a  sincere  affection  and  respect  for  his 
father's  memory,  and  he  told  many  stories  of  the  elder 
Wallack's  life  off  the  stage  and  on.  His  great  trouble 
— or  his  editor's  great  trouble — was  his  love  for  lords  ; 
and  he  was  too  fond  of  dwelling  on  what  his  father  had 
said  to  the  Duke  of  Wellington  or  to  the  Marquis  of 
Something,  to  the  exclusion  of  his  father's  conversation 
with  Elliston  or  Kean  or  the  other  nobility  of  the  stage. 

One  night,  I  remember,  he  had  sent  us  a  card  for  his 
box  at  the  old  theatre,  then  "  Palmer's,"  at  Broadway 
and  Thirtieth  Street,  to  see  a  revival  of  London  Assur 
ance.  He  had  been  present  at  a  previous  performance 
and  he  spent  an  entire  evening  in  telling  how  the 
older  actors  used  to  play  their  parts;  giving  admirable 
imitations  of  all  the  Dollies  and  Lady  Gays  and  Sir 
Harcourts  he  had  known  or  with  whom  he  had  played. 
Not  a  word  of  what  he  said,  of  course,  could  go  into 
the  book;  but  no  better  talk  ever  went  up  a  chimney  to 
be  lost  for  ever. 

He  had  a  sincere  affection  for  Harry  Montague  and 
they  were  much  together.  When  Montague  suddenly 
died  in  California,  Wallack  telegraphed  to  Mrs.  Mann, 
in  L/ondon,  asking  as  to  what  disposition  should  be 
made  of  the  body,  then  on  its  way  to  New  York.  Mrs. 
Mann  —  Montague's  mother  —  cabled  in  reply,  "You 
have  been  good  enough  to  my  boy  in  life;  and  I  would 
like  him  to  lie  by  your  side  in  death."  He  was  buried 
in  the  family  plot  of  the  elder  Wallack  in  Greenwood, 
tester  himself  rests  in  the  same  enclosure. 


io8  Galfce  in  a  %ibran> 

Wallack's  last  letter  to  me  is  rather  pathetic.     It  is 
dated  April  28  (ii 


"  MY  DEAR  HUTTON: 

"  If  you  can  look  in  on  me  a  couple  of  hours,  before 
your  luncheon  time  to-morrow,  we  can  go  through 
regularly  what  is  already  done  with  a  view  to  the 
magazine  articles.  If  you  cannot  come  to  me,  I  will 
limp  to  you.  Yours  always, 

"  LESTER  WALLACK." 

I  went  to  him.  But  very  often  during  those  months, 
in  his  feeble  way,  he  limped  to  us;  always  welcome 
and  always  cheerful  and  lovable.  He  died  in  his 
country  home  a  few  months  later. 

Henry  J.  Montague  was  a  man  of  unusual  personal 
charm,  off  the  stage  and  on.  He  was  sympathetic, 
gentle,  and  "  sweet," — a  womanly  man  in  a  way  with 
out  being  at  all  unmanly;  and  he  was  as  popular  with 
men  as  with  the  other  sex.  One  Sunday  night  at 
Delmonico's,  then  on  the  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue  and 
Fourteenth  Street,  New  York,  during  the  first  run  of 
the  Shaughran,  he  bet  dinners  for  the  party  that  he 
would  the  next  night  whistle  the  then  topical  song  of 
the  day — Captain  Jenks  of  the  Horse  Marines — instead 
of  The  British  Grenadiers,  which  the  part  demanded. 
We  all  sat  in  front  and  when  the  young  officer  crossed 
the  stage  at  the  proper  time  he  gave  us  a  queer  little 
glance  and  whistled, — The  British  Grenadiers!  He 
confessed  afterwards  that  he  had  lost  his  bet  volun- 


"BUI?"  Jflorence  109 

tarily  and  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first  place  he  wanted 
a  chance  to  pay  back  some  of  the  hospitality  of  which 
he  had  been  the  recipient  here;  and  in  the  second  place 
Mr.  Wallack,  his  manager,  had  treated  him  with  such 
uniform  kindness  and  courtesy  that  he  did  not  feel  like 
taking  even  so  small  a  liberty  upon  Mr.  Wallack's 
stage.  His  last  spoken  words  were  curiously  prophetic 
and  suggestive:  "  Ring  down  the  curtain  !  " 

William  J.  Florence  I  knew  very  well  and  liked  very 
much.  Everybody  liked  "  Billy"  Florence.  His 
handsome  face  and  his  winning  smile  were  absolutely 
irresistible.  In  my  Plays  and  Players  and  elsewhere 
in  print  I  had  written  something  about  his  dramatic 
career,  and  what  I  wrote  was  pleasing  and  gratifying 
to  him.  I  remembered  him  from  his  earliest  experi 
ences  as  an  actor.  I  had  watched  him  closely;  I  had 
seen  nearly  everything  he  ever  did;  and  as  I  said  of 
him  at  the  time  of  his  death,  I  knew  of  no  man  on 
the  English-speaking  stage  who  did  so  many  things 
so  well.  His  versatility  was  very  remarkable  and, 
although  he  was  in  nothing  great,  he  was  in  all  things 
good. 

Florence's  last  joke  was  one  of  his  best  and  was  also 
peculiarly  pathetic  and  prophetic.  He  arrived  in  New 
York  from  Boston  at  the  close  of  an  engagement  there 
and  on  his  way  to  Philadelphia.  At  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel,  where  he  always  stopped,  he  was  told  that  the 
barber  who  had  shaved  him  for  many  years  had  died 
that  Sunday  morning  and  was  to  be  buried  the  next 


no  ftalfce  in  a  library 

afternoon.  Florence's  professional  engagements  would 
not  permit  him  to  attend  the  funeral,  but  he  would  like 
to  do  something  to  show  his  respect  for  Fritz  and  his 
sympathy  for  Fritz's  family.  The  boys  in  the  shop 
had  subscribed  for  a  floral  tribute  and  had  raised 
twenty-three  dollars  for  the  purpose.  "  Here  are 
twenty-seven  more,"  said  Florence;  "  make  it  some 
thing  handsome  !  "  As  the  largest  contributor  he  was 
asked  before  he  left  town  to  suggest  an  appropriate 
motto  to  be  fixed  in  purple  violets  across  the  enormous 
mass  of  white  roses  which  had  been  ordered  for  the 
occasion;  something  which  everybody  would  under 
stand,  and  which  Fritz  himself  would  have  liked 
Without  a  moment's  hesitation  the  actor  said 
"  NEXT  !  "  and  the  word  was  accepted  and  adopted. 

"And  alas!"  said  Mr.  Jefferson,  as  he  was  once 
telling  the  story,  "  poor  Billy  himself  was  the  next  to 
answer  the  familiar  call ! ' ' 

He  was  taken  ill  in  his  hotel  in  Philadelphia  at  the 
end  of  that  same  week,  and  died  there  in  the  course  of 
a  few  days.  Mrs.  Kendal,  who  was  with  him  during 
his  illness,  has  told  in  private  many  of  the  particulars 
of  it.  He  had  been  in  the  habit  of  telegraphing  to 
Mrs.  Florence  wherever  he  or  she  might  be,  if  they 
chanced  to  be  separated  on  a  Sunday.  That  last  Sun 
day  he  worked  himself  into  a  fever  over  the  cable  mes 
sage  which  was  to  be  sent  to  his  wife  in  London.  He 
did  not  wish  to  alarm  her,  but  he  knew  how  ill  he  was 
and  he  did  not  want  to  cable  what  was  not  true.  He 


Gbe  Beatb  of  Florence 


sank  rapidly  the  next  day  and  his  only  desire  was  that 
she  might  reach  him  before  he  went  into  the  Awful 
Future  alone.  He  prayed  for  her  speedy  arrival  and 
for  his  own  strength  to  wait;  and  Mrs.  Kendal  says 
that  even  until  the  end  he  lay  with  his  hands  folded  in 
the  attitude  of  prayer,  crying  almost  inarticulately, 
"O  God,  keep  me  until  she  can  come  !  "  But  he  died 
before  she  arrived  in  this  country. 

When  Florence's  body  was  removed  from  the  hotel 
to  the  railway  station  in  Philadelphia,  a  party  of 
working-men  in  their  Sunday  clothes  asked  permission 
to  carry  it  through  the  streets.  They  were  not  known 
to  anybody.  They  said  simply  that  Mr.  Florence  had 
afforded  them  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  and  enjoyment 
and  that  they  wanted  to  do  something  for  him  in  re 
turn.  Of  course  their  request  was  granted. 

A  startling  coincidence  is  connected  with  Florence's 
death.  1  had  written  a  hurried  obituary  notice  of 
him  for  Harper'  s  Weekly  \  to  receive  which  the  presses 
were  stopped  for  a  few  hours.  It  was  to  be  illustrated 
with  a  portrait  and  with  a  facsimile  of  his  autograph 
taken  from  a  letter  sent  to  Franklin  Square  for  that 
purpose. 

On  the  morning  of  the  funeral,  as  I  was  leaving  the 
house,  a  servant  handed  me  among  other  mail  matter 
an  envelope  which  contained  a  note  from  Florence. 
It  was  signed  '  '  Yours  affectionately  "  ;  it  was  written 
upon  the  paper  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel,  where  he 
was  then  lying  dead;  and  it  bore  the  date  of  that  very 


H2  Galfcs  in  a  library 

day  !     Of  course  it  had  been  written  in  some  previous 
year;  but  the  shock,  naturally,  was  very  great. 

Florence,  like  Booth,  occasionally  dropped  into 
rhyme.  In  our  Guest  Book  he  wrote: 

When  in  after  years  you  see 
The  page  I  mutilate  for  thee, 
Let  pearly  tears  flow  fast  in  torrents 
At  thought  of  yours,  forever, 

FLORENCE  (W.  J.). 

Florence  was  very  much  interested  in  The  Players 
from  the  outset  and  he  was  greatly  pleased  when  he 
was  placed  on  the  Governing  Board  as  successor  to 
I^awrence  Barrett.  He  attended  but  one  meeting.  He 
was  so  full  of  life  and  spirits,  said  so  many  funny  and 
irrelevant  things,  that  business  was  greatly  interrupted. 
Booth,  who  presided,  said,  "  These  two  boys — Flor 
ence  and  Mr.  Jefferson — must  be  separated  !  " 

And  Florence,  like  the  good  boy  that  he  was,  went 
over  beside  the  Secretary  of  the  meeting  and  asked  if 
he  might  play  with  the  Secretary's  watch.  He  opened 
it,  looked  at  the  works,  and  wanted  to  know  if  he 
could  see  the  picture  of  the  wife  in  the  locket  attached. 
He  was  fully  aware,  however,  of  what  was  going  on. 
He  made  many  absolutely  pertinent  and  sound  remarks 
when  the  occasion  warranted;  he  voted  for  the  proper 
candidates;  then  he  asked  what  I  (the  Secretary)  had 
ever  done  to  merit  so  good  a  watch  and  so  good  a  wife; 
and  he  seconded  the  motion  to  adjourn. 

He  never  entered  The  Players  again. 


3obn 


I  put  a  nickel  in  the  slot  the  other  day,  on  the 
leading  thoroughfare  of  a  civilised  city,  to  hear  in  a 
phonograph  "  The  Ravings  of  John  McCullough,"  so 
advertised  in  large  letters  under  an  old  lithograph  of 
the  dead  tragedian.  It  was  his  voice,  or  a  clever 
imitation  of  it,  from  Virginius,  Spartacus,  and  Brutus, 
and  ending  each  with  that  dreadful  laugh,  half  insane, 
half  idiotic,  which  was  so  distressing  to  those  of  us  who 
knew  him  when  his  mental  infirmities  were  beginning 
to  make  themselves  evident. 

It  was  a  brutal  exhibition.  But,  startling  as  it  was, 
it  brought  up  memories  of  an  unusually  attractive  per 
sonality;  and  it  has  made  me  think  very  often  since, 
pleasantly  rather  than  painfully,  of  a  man  of  whom  I 
saw  not  a  little  in  a  social  way  at  one  time  and  whom 
I  greatly  liked. 

I  had  no  knowledge  of  McCullough'  s  failing  physical 
and  mental  powers  until  I  met  him  by  chance  one  Sun 
day  evening  in  Mr.  Millet's  studio  in  New  York. 
McCullough  had  come  in  to  discuss  a  costume  for 
Virginius  which  Mr.  Millet  was  designing  for  him 
and  he  talked  like  his  own  self  until  we  all  walked  out 
together,  about  ten  o'clock.  We  started  toward  Sixth 
Avenue,  and  when  he  stopped  his  car,  I  said  "  Good 
night,  John,"  and  turned  to  go  up  the  street  with  Mr. 
Millet  who  had  come  out  to  exercise  his  collie  dog. 
John  —  poor  John,  —  who  knew  that  it  was  not  my  way 
home,  thought  that  I  wanted  to  get  rid  of  him  and 
burst  into  a  torrent  of  tears.  I  went  with  him  to  his 


£alfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 


hotel,  he  holding  my  hand  in  the  street  car;  I  stopped 
with  him  for  a  while  in  his  room;  finally  I  put  him  to 
bed  as  if  he  had  been  a  baby  and  held  his  hand  until 
forgetfulness  came. 

There  were  no  ravings  on  that  occasion.  He  spoke 
of  his  past  life,  professional  and  personal;  of  what  it 
had  been  and  of  what  it  might  have'  been;  he  told  me 
something  of  his  mother,  of  childish  trials  and  troubles, 
and  he  asked  affectionately  after  my  mother,  forgetting 
that  she  was  gone.  And  I  think  he  breathed  a  little 
prayer  before  he  went  to  sleep. 

Some  time  before  that  I  found  him  sitting  with 
Florence  at  a  small  table  in  Delmonico's  cafe.  I  joined 
them,  when  Florence  said  to  him:  "John,  this  boy  is 
going  to  be  married.  His  engagement  is  just  an 
nounced."  McCullough  replied  that  he  was  glad, 
very  glad  of  it.  He  knew  that  I  would  select  none 
but  a  good  woman.  And  then  he  spoke  as  a  bishop 
might  have  spoken  of  the  ennobling  influence  upon 
any  man  of  a  good  woman's  love.  Florence  coincided 
with  him  in  every  point;  and  rarely  has  woman  re 
ceived  a  more  touching  tribute  than  was  paid  her  by 
those  two  play-actors  in  a  public  restaurant. 

I  was  told  one  night  some  years  ago  at  a  large  Lon 
don  dinner  party,  that  I  was  in  great  luck  because  I 
was  to  act  as  escort  to  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and 
one  of  the  most  charming  women  in  England.  And  I 
was  in  luck.  She  was  everything  my  hostess  had 
called  her,  young,  lovely,  brilliant,  and  intellectual. 


- 


v^,  — -_  ~~  _*JLx>^    vJJU&-v*. tJU,  . 

',   LJ^^^^^/ 

2?%^- 
if-H- 

Mg 


SIGNATURES  ON  THE  BACK  OF  A  KINSMEN  MENU 
IRVINQ'S  BREAKFAST  TO  BOOTH 


a  IDenerable  Hctress          115 

But  in  a  very  few  moments  I  forgot  all  about  her  ! 
Seated  on  the  other  side  of  me  was  a  lady  to  whom  I 
had  not  been  presented,  whose  name  I  did  not  hear. 
She  was  no  longer  young,  she  was  no  longer  pretty, 
except  for  that  indescribable  charm  which  always  ac 
companies  old  age;  but  to  me  she  was  very  brilliant 
indeed.  She  turned  to  me  suddenly  and  said,  "  New 
York  must  have  changed  since  I  saw  it,  sir."  I  told 
her  that  New  York  was  always  changing,  always 
growing;  very  different  had  it  become  in  all  respects 
from  the  city  in  which  I  had  been  born  and  in  which 
I  had  spent  my  early  youth;  and  I  asked  how  long  it 
was  since  she  had  known  New  York.  "  Let  me  see," 
she  replied,  "  I  was  playing  at  the  Park  Theatre  with 
my  husband  in  1835,  or  was  it  1836?  Anyway,  it  was 
in  midsummer,  quite  sixty  years  ago  ! ' '  And  then  I 
knew  that  my  great  good  luck  had  given  me  for  a 
neighbour  Mrs.  Keeley. 

She  talked  a  good  deal  of  New  York  as  she  remem 
bered  it  at  the  end  of  all  those  years  and  she  talked 
very  freely  of  the  American  stage  and  of  the  British 
stage  in  the  early  days  of  the  century  then  drawing  to 
a  close.  She  gave  me  her  impressions  of  the  giants 
whom  she  had  seen  play  and  with  whom  she  had 
played:  Edmund  Kean,  the  elder  Booth,  Macready, 
all  the  Kembles;  and  she  had  many  questions  to  ask 
concerning  the  stage  life  and  the  home  life  of  the  men 
and  women  who  hold  the  stage  to-day  on  my  side 
of  the  Atlantic.  She  wanted  to  know  all  about  Mr. 


n6  £alhs  in  a  library 

Jefferson,  and  Miss  Rehan,  and  about  Mr.  Herne  and 
his  Shore  Acres  ;  to  all  of  which  I  answered  as  little  as 
possible,  in  my  selfish  desire  to  hear  as  much  as  I  could. 
And  I  felt  as  if  I  were  turning  over  the  pages  of  a  vol 
ume  of  the  most  delightful  dramatic  reminiscences  pos 
sessed  by  the  modern  world. 

It  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  be  able  to  turn  over 
other  equally  interesting  leaves  in  that  great  book  of 
the  dramatic  past. 

One  "Ladies'  Day  "  at  The  Players,  when  the  place 
was  crowded  by  the  fair  friends  of  the  club,  I  was  de 
tailed  by  the  chairman  of  the  Reception  Committee  to 
do  the  honours  of  the  house  to  Mrs.  Maeder,  a  nice, 
rosy  -  cheeked,  brown  -  haired  little  person  of  what 
seemed  to  me  to  be  the  usual  age  of  mothers  in  gen 
eral.  She  was  much  pleased  with  everything  she  saw  ; 
with  the  array  of  pewter  mugs  in  the  dining-room,  each 
bearing  its  owner's  name  and  many  of  them  stamped 
with  great  names,  which  alas,  now  are  only  names  and 
memoires  ;  and  with  all  the  other  objects  of  rich  asso 
ciation.  She  was  very  tender  and  a  little  tearful  as  she 
stood  in  Booth's  empty  room  and  sat  for  a  while  in  his 
particular  arm-chair,  and  she  spoke  of  him  most  famil 
iarly  and  affectionately  as  she  spoke  familiarly  and 
affectionately  of  his  father.  She  stopped  to  read  some 
of  the  more  valuable  of  the  autograph  letters  framed 
and  hanging  on  the  walls  and  she  was  particularly  im 
pressed  by  the  line  of  old  portraits  in  the  library.  She 
recognised  at  once  Joseph  Cowell,  John  Duff  and  Mrs. 


Hn  flnfant  phenomenon 


Duff,  Cooper,  and  the  rest  of  the  older  heroes  and 
heroines  of  her  profession;  and  when  I  said,  "  You 
seem  to  be  familiar  with  all  these  ancient  worthies,  as 
they  are  pictured  here,  Mrs.  Maeder,"  she  replied, 
"  Why,  my  son,  I  'm  a  contemporary  of  most  of  them; 
I  've  been  on  the  stage  myself  for  seventy  years  and  I 
must  go  home  soon  and  prepare  for  my  part  to-night." 

I  knew  that  she  was  the  mother  of  Mr.  Frank  Maeder 
and  that  she  had  been  an  actress;  but  I  did  not  realise 
until  that  moment  that  she  was  Clara  Fisher  —  the 
great  Clara  Fisher  —  the  most  wonderfully  successful 
and  the  most  marvellous  of  infant  phenomena,  not  even 
excepting  Master  Betty,  in  the  whole  history  of  the 
drama;  the  Clara  Fisher  whose  own  history  I  had 
written  years  before  and  in  the  past  tense;  the  "  L,ittle 
Clara  Fisher  "  whose  portrait  as  a  child  was  among  the 
most  cherished  of  my  dramatic  prints;  the  Clara  Fisher 
who  had  carried  vast  audiences  by  storm  when  James 
Madison  was  President  of  the  United  States  and  when 
George  III.  was  King  of  England;  the  Clara  Fisher 
who  had  won  all  hearts;  the  Clara  Fisher  whose  name 
was  given  to  steamboats,  and  to  brands  of  cigars,  and 
to  bonnets,  and  to  neckties  long  before  the  fathers  and 
mothers  of  many  of  us  had  the  faintest  idea  what  neck 
ties  or  bonnets  were. 

Concerning  her  some  local  poet  wrote,  upon  her  first 
arrival  in  New  York,  in  1827: 

A  charming  young  Fisher  a-fishing  has  come 
From  the  land  of  our  fathers,  her  sea-circled  home, 


Galhe  in  a  library 


She  uses  no  lines,  and  she  uses  no  hook, 

But  she  catches  her  prey  with  a  smile  and  a  look. 

She  caught  her  prey  with  the  same  instruments 
almost  seventy  years  later. 

I  was  not  permitted  to  monopolise  Mrs.  Maeder  on 
that  occasion.  The  knowledge  of  her  appearance  soon 
spread  over  the  club,  and  she  was  the  queen  of  the 
afternoon.  Kvery  person  who  had  ever  heard  of  her 
was  eager  to  be  presented  to  her  and  she  began  to  real 
ise,  she  said,  "  the  sweet  pleasure  of  not  being  quite 
forgotten."  Mr.  Jefferson,  whom  she  knew  as  a  baby, 
bowed  low  over  her  dear  old  hand;  and  Mrs.  Drew 
embraced  her  heartily.  I  said,  "  Here  comes  another 
contemporary  of  yours,  Mrs.  Maeder;  here  's  Mrs. 
Drew." 

"My  son,"  she  cried,  with  a  little  laugh,  —  "my 
son,  I  was  on  the  stage  before  your  Mrs.  Drew  was 
born!" 

And  then  she  turned  and  kissed  on  the  cheek  Mrs. 
Drew's  granddaughter,  who  was  herself  on  the  stage. 


CHAPTER  V 

imaginary  "Copy  " — Dramatic  Criticism— Letters  to  The  Even 
ing  Mail— The  Funeral  of  Henry  Kingsley— "  Mothers  in 
Fiction  " — Presentation  Copies — Author's  Readings — The 
Professional  Critic — Trials  of  the  Literary  Life. 

MY  connection  with  The  Evening  Mail,  slight  as  it 
was,  naturally  brought  me  into  contact  with  the  mem 
bers  of  its  regular  staff,  including  such  men  as  Major 
J.  M.  Bundy,  the  Managing  Kditor;  Mr.  R.  R.  Bowker, 
the  Literary  Editor;  and  Mr.  Bronson  Howard,  the 
Dramatic  Critic;  and  I  began  to  write  by  degrees  for 
the  paper  all  sorts  of  things  upon  all  sorts  of  subjects. 
I  attended  all  important  "  first  nights  "  at  the  theatres, 
noticed  books,  collected  local  items,  went  to  fires,  and 
once  I  assisted  in  the  invention  of  a  peculiarly  horrible 
murder.  A  "stickful"  was  wanted  by  the  composi 
tors.  A  "stickful"  is  the  shop-name  for  as  much 
type  as  can  be  contained  in  a  "  composing-stick.''  It 
naturally  varies  in  quantity  of  words  according  to  the 
size  of  the  type  but  in  space  it  measures  a  little  more 
than  the  length  of  the  palm  of  a  man's  hand.  Nothing 
was  ready;  nobody  had  a  stickful  of  poetry,  literary 
news,  or  of  anything  else,  and  the  murder  was  devised 
and  invented.  Each  man  contributed  some  item  and 

119 


120  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

Bundy  wrote  it  all  out.  The  extreme  suburbs  of 
Hoboken,  New  Jersey,  were  selected  as  the  place;  the 
time  was  the  early  morning  of  that  very  day;  the 
victim  was  a  hard-working,  harmless,  worthy  wife 
and  mother;  the  perpetrator  was  a  burly,  brutal  German 
called  Isaac  Ousenblatt,  the  name  being  an  inspiration 
of  my  own.  Of  course  the  whole  thing  was  what  is 
called  * '  a  fake. ' '  There  was  no  murder,  there  was  no 
victim,  there  was  no  Isaac  Ousenblatt.  But  the  "  Ous 
enblatt  Murder"  was  reported  in  the  journals  of  the 
next  morning;  its  horrors  were  intensified;  it  was  tele 
graphed  all  over  the  country;  and  it  even  came  back  to 
America  in  the  "  exchanges"  from  the  other  side  of 
the  Atlantic,  So  far  as  the  Mail  knew,  the  story  was 
never  contradicted  nor  denied.  And  it  has  entirely 
destroyed  my  own  personal  belief  in  anything  contained 
in  the  papers,  no  matter  what  their  colour  may  be. 

The  next  important  "  fake"  I  perpetrated  was  an 
elaborate  operatic  criticism.  I  was  ' '  assigned  ' '  seats 
at  the  Academy  of  Music,  the  historical  old  building  on 
Fourteenth  Street  and  Irving  Place.  It  was  to  be  an 
ordinary  performance  and  the  ordinary  <;  stickful  "  was 
requested;  a  list  of  the  notables  present  rather  than 
any  comment  upon  the  performance  or  the  performers. 
When  I  arrived  at  the  door  I  was  saluted  by  placards 
stating  that  the  prima-donna  had  the  traditional  sore- 
throat,  that  the  bill  was  changed,  and  that  Signorina 
Somebody  would  make  her  first  appearance  upon  the 
lyric  stage.  The  importance  of  the  occasion  was 


'* 


LAURENCE   HUTTON   IN   THE   "MAIL"    DAYS 


Journalistic  jfafcee 


121 


recognised  and  the  fact  that  it  would  give  the  reporter 
a  chance,  perhaps,  to  get  ahead  of  the  other  men.  An 
elaborate  ' '  Book  of  the  Opera  ? '  was  bought — score 
and  all — I  did  not  understand  a  word  or  a  note  of  it, 
but  that  made  no  difference.  I  haunted  the  lobbies, 
picking  up  an  idea  here  and  there.  I  besieged  my 
musical  friends  in  the  stalls  and  in  the  boxes  for  their 
impressions.  I  wormed  some  sort  of  a  biography  of 
the  young  debutante  from  a  friend  of  her  father;  I  set 
down  certain  technical  phrases,  as  "  the  second  num 
ber,"  "  symphonetic,"  "variety  and  mastery  of  ex 
pression,"  "leading  themes,"  "artistic  simplicity." 
I  remember  saying  that  ' '  she  was  a  little  sharp  at  the 
pitch  in  the  beginning,  but  that  she  soon  overcame  the 
tendency  " — whatever  that  means, — and  the  result  was 
half  a  column  of  sapient  wisdom  upon  a  subject  con 
cerning  which  the  writer  was  absolutely  and  helplessly 
ignorant.  It  is  recorded  that  the  debutante — this  was 
her  first  and  only  appearance  in  anything  like  a  lead 
ing  part — bought  many  copies  of  that  evening's  paper 
to  send  to  her  friends  and  that  she  still  preserves  it  in 
her  scrap-book  as  the  most  appreciative  and  intelligent 
criticism  she  ever  read. 

Such  is  modern  journalism  ! 

Apropos  of  this  it  may  be  confessed  that  one  of  the 
most  exhaustive  and  most  comprehensive  dramatic 
notices  ever  produced  was  written  by  my  successor  on 
the  paper,  a  young  college  graduate  who  had  never 
seen  the  play  before — the  play  was  Hamlet  and  Booth 


122  Galfce  in  a 


was  the  Dane  —  and  who  had  never  even  read  it  except 
in  a  fragmentary  way  as  it  appears  in  Bartlett's  volume 
of  Familiar  Quotations.  Booth  did  not  preserve  the 
article.  I  doubt  if  he  read  it;  but  the  "juvenile  "  who 
played  Osric  and  the  '  '  old  comedian  '  '  who  played 

Polonius  told  me  afterwards  that  the  new  man  under- 

\ 

stood  his  business  and  knew  what  he  was  about  ! 
The  new  man  later  went  on  to  a  morning  paper  and 
wrote  an  elaborate  notice  of  a  performance  which  never 
took  place.  This  brought  his  career  as  dramatic  critic 
to  an  abrupt  conclusion.  But  he  was  subsequently 
very  successful  as  a  critic  on  art  and  as  the  "  Horse 
Editor"  of  a  daily  in  Boston.  And  he  died,  literally, 
in  harness,  years  ago. 

In  my  own  notices  of  current  dramatic  productions 
more  attention  was  paid  to  the  new  players  than  to  the 
old  and  I  have  given  to  not  a  few  men  and  women 
now  standing  on  high  ground  in  their  profession  the 
first  words  of  praise  they  ever  received  in  print.  There 
was  nothing  new  to  be  written  about  Wallack's  Young 
Marlow  or  Gilbert's  Old  Hardcastle,  about  Booth's 
Hamlet  or  David  Anderson's  Ghost;  but  I  am  glad  to 
think  that  I  saw  a  good  deal  of  promise  in  the  Diggory 
of  Mr.  E.  M.  Holland  and  in  the  Second  Gravedigger  of 
Mr.  Owen  Fawcett  and  said  so,  long  before  any  other 
critic  thought  them  worthy  of  a  line  or  a  word.  I 
recognised  the  merits  and  the  great  possibilities  of  Miss 
Clara  Morris  when  she  first  appeared  in  a  compara 
tively  unimportant  part;  and  when  the  almost  un- 


Spirit  of  Criticism        123 


known  Mrs.  G.  H.  Gilbert  played  Hester  Dethridge  in 
a  dramatisation  of  Man  and  Wife,  I  prophesied  that 
there  had  come  to  us  one  of  the  best  '  '  old  women  '  '  the 
American  stage  had  ever  known.  The  good  in  play 
and  player  was  looked  for  rather  than  the  bad.  The 
desire  was  to  encourage  rather  than  to  dishearten  —  it 
is  much  easier  to  censure  than  to  commend  —  and, 
except  in  cases  of  indefensible  incompetence,  indiffer 
ence,  or  indecency,  silence  was  maintained  rather  than 
damnation  or  condemnation.  This  may  not  be  the 
essence  of  criticism  but  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  moral 
law. 

During  those  Mail  days  I  became  a  man  of  compara 
tive  leisure.  Somewhat  broken  in  health,  after  bearing 
the  burden  of  that  awful  load  of  hops,  the  father's 
death  had  left  me  modestly,  but  comfortably,  independ 
ent  in  the  matter  of  income,  with  time  on  my  hands  to 
write  a  little  and  to  read  a  great  deal.  I  realised  how 
seriously  I  had  neglected  my  opportunities  in  my 
school-days,  and  I  tried  to  make  up  for  it  by  reading 
everything  in  a  serious  vein  which  came  within  reach. 
I  had  an  omnivorous  taste;  but  I  preferred  history, 
biography,  and  autobiography,  which,  as  having  man 
for  a  subject,  I  felt  to  be  the  proper  study  of  an  ignor 
ant  member  of  the  genus  mankind.  Plutarch's  Lives 
was  the  opening  chorus;  Johnson's  Lives  of  the  Poets, 
Pepys,  Boswell'sy^w^w,  Crabb  Robinson,  Lockhart's 
Scott,  Cumberland's  Memoirs,  Madame  D'Arblay,  Tal- 
fourd's  Lamb,  Moore's  Byron,  and  the  like,  followed  in 


124  Galfcs  in  a  library 

due  course;  and  thereby  was  made  the  acquaintance — 
more  or  less  familiar — of  men  worth  knowing,  and  of 
books  worth  reading. 

My  mother  and  I  went  abroad  every  summer,  mak 
ing  London  our  centre  of  travel  and  seeing  something 
new  of  the  British  Isles  and  of  the  Continent  each 
year.  One  season  it  was  the  English  and  the  Scottish 
lakes,  the  next  Holland,  perhaps,  or  Switzerland. 
The  month  of  August  was  usually  spent  upon  the 
large  estate  of  an  uncle  in  Fifeshire,  Scotland,  and 
from  all  these  places  were  written  regular  weekly  letters 
to  the  Mail.  A  series  of  articles  upon  ' '  Scottish  Farm 
Life  "  occupied  some  months.  The  different  grades  of 
agricultural  existence,  from  the  Squire  who  leased 
land,  through  the  Laird  who  worked  his  own  land, 
and  the  tenant-farmer  who  tilled  the  acres  rented  from 
the  Squire,  down  to  the  cotter  who  worked  for  yearly 
wages,  were  shown.  How  the  labourers  were  engaged 
and  housed  and  paid,  so  much  in  cash,  so  much  in 
coals,  so  many  bowls  of  meal,  and  so  many  quarts  of 
m\\k>  per  diem  ;  how  they  were  cared  for  when  they 
were  ill;  the  length  of  their  hours  of  toil;  and  what 
happened  to  them  when  they  were  born  or  married  or 
died, — were  all  set  down.  It  is  a  patriarchal  exist 
ence,  slow,  but  usually  sure,  and  not  unhappy.  And 
it  is  entirely  different  from  the  life  in  rural  sections  in 
newer  parts  of  the  world.  The  social  line  is  very  strictly 
drawn.  The  cotter  looks  up  to  the  tenant-farmer — 
who  is  known  as  the  "  Maister."  The  "Maister" 


Scottish  Iftomendature        125 

looks  up  to  the  Laird;  the  Laird  looks  up  to  the 
Squire;  the  Squire,  who  belongs  to  the  "gentry-class," 
looks  up  to  the  Aristocracy;  the  Aristocracy  looks  up 
to  Royalty.  And  the  Almighty  looks  down  on  them 
all! 

The  Squire's  daughter  goes  to  school  with  the 
"Maister's"  daughter.  They  study  the  languages, 
the  arts,  and  music  together,  in  each  other's  school 
rooms  and  nurseries,  under  the  same  teachers,  and  out 
of  the  same  books,  on  a  footing  of  perfect  intellectual 
equality.  But  there  it  ends.  The  "  Maister's  "  daugh 
ter  may  be  more  refined,  more  intelligent,  more  adapt 
able,  more  everything,  than  is  the  daughter  of  the 
Squire.  But  she  is  built  of  different  clay.  She  recog 
nises  the  fact;  and  she  accepts  it.  In  the  case  of  any 
important  local  social  function  she  will  not  presume  to 
approach  the  girl  of  her  own  age  whose  drawings  she 
has  corrected  and  criticised  the  day  before  as  though 
they  were  sisters  and  peers.  She  will  not  dare  to  sit 
to-day  at  the  same  table  with  the  girl  who,  yesterday, 
after  the  French  lesson,  spread  her  bread  and  butter 
for  her,  and  shared  her  jam. 

The  peculiarities  of  Scottish  local  nomenclature  are 
as  trying  to  the  eye  and  to  the  tongue  of  the  ordinary 
American  visitor  as  are  the  Indian  names  of  our  own 
land  to  the  average  Scot. 

There  went  one  summer  to  this  Fifeshire  farm  a  young 
lady  from  Schenectady.  Her  own  personal  cognomen, 
Miss  Cunningham,  was  familiar  and  easy  enough;  but 


1*6  Galfcs  in  a  library 

' '  Miss  Cunningham  of  Schenectady  ' '  was  beyond  the 
Fifeshire  man's  powers  of  utterance.  Schenectady  to 
us  of  the  States  is  as  simple  as  is  Albany  or  Troy  or 
Baltimore;  but  there  was  not  a  person  in  all  that  part 
of  the  world  who  could  spell  or  pronounce  the  word, 
and  most  entertaining  to  Miss  Cunningham  herself 
were  the  attempts  at  it.  "  Skinney-faddy "  and 
"  Skenk-ter-addy  "  were  as  near  to  it  as  the  most  suc 
cessful  of  them  ever  came.  To  the  L,aird,  particu 
larly,  it  was  most  wonderfully  perplexing  and  amusing. 
He  struggled  with  it  day  and  night,  laughing  at  his 
own  attempts  and  failures  and  wondering,  in  his  semi- 
serious,  semi-humorous  way,  how  any  sensible,  self- 
respecting  Christian  could  confess  to  having  been  born 
in  a  place  that  called  itself  like  that ! 

In  his  eyes  the  orthographic  and  orthoepic  beam  of 
his  own  titles  and  appellations  was  entirely  eclipsed 
by  the  marvellous  mote  known  as  Schenectady;  and  he 
never  realised  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  counties  of 
Schoharie,  Cattaraugus,  and  Chemung  in  the  State  of 
New  York  might  safely  bite  their  thumbs  at  the  resi 
dents  of  the  Shire  of  Fife  in  the  Kingdom  of  Scotland, 
until  his  eyes  were  opened  somewhat  rudely,  and  his 
sight  was,  in  a  way,  restored.  "  Uncle  John,"  I  said 
to  him  suddenly  one  evening  when  he  was  in  convul 
sions  over  Schenectady,  "  Uncle  John,  what  is  the 
name  of  your  place  ?  "  "Baldutho'  "  ["  Balduthy  " 
in  the  vernacular].  "And  of  your  parish  ?"  "Aron- 
crauch  "  [Arron-craw] .  "And  of  your  post-office?" 


THE  MAISTER  OF      BALDUTHO' 


HENRY  KINGSLEY 


Summer  IHflanberincje         127 

"  Pittenweem  "  [pronounced  as  it  is  spelled].  "And  of 
your  railway  station?"  "  Killconguhar "  [Kill- 
nocker].  "And  still,  Uncle  John,"  I  continued, 
"you,  as  I^aird  of  Balduthy,  Elder  of  the  Kirk  of 
Arron-craw,  receiving  your  letters  and  papers  at  Pit 
tenweem,  and  taking  your  trains  at  Kill-uocker,  think 
Schenectady  funny  !  " 

Some  time  during  the  sixties — I  don't  remember 
when — I  was  in  L,uzerne,  Switzerland,  with  my  mother, 
and  had  a  great  desire^to  make  the  ascent  of  the  Rhigi. 
This  was  before  the  days  of  the  railroad  to  the  top  of 
that  mountain,  when  the  travel  was  rough  and  hard, 
whether  done  on  foot  or  on  horseback,  and  involved  a 
good  many  hours  of  rough  journeying.  I  started  out 
by  a  boat  to  the  mountain's  foot,  with  only  a  small 
grip  in  my  hand,  having  arranged  by  telegraph  for  ac 
commodation  in  the  little  hotel  on  the  top  of  the  mount 
ain.  On  the  way  I  fell  in  and  foregathered  with  two 
American  boys  of  about  my  own  age,  as  boys  are  apt 
to  do  in  a  strange  land,  and  when,  after  some  hours  of 
weary  labour,  we  reached  our  destination  we  found 
that  there  was  but  one  vacant  room  at  our  disposal  and 
that  one  had  been  promised  to  each  of  us.  It  was  a 
small  room  and  in  it  was  a  small  single  bed.  My  two 
companions  seemed  to  have  the  first  claim  to  it  and  I 
was  left  to  sleep  upon  the  floor  or  upon  a  billiard  table. 
However,  they  kindly  took  me  in,  had  my  cot  placed 
in  the  small  apartment,  and  after  much  talk  we  went  to 
our  rest,  having  missed  on  account  of  clouds  the  sunset 


128  Galfcs  fn  a  library 

we  had  come  so  far  to  see.  The  same  fate  met  us  in 
the  early  morning,  when  there  was  no  sunrise  visible 
and  no  view  of  anything,  and  we  concluded  to  tele 
graph  to  our  several  mothers  at  the  Switzerhof  in 
Luzerne  the  fact  that  we  would  give  the  sun  another 
chance.  That  day  we  spent  happily  together  not  only 
among  the  clouds  but  above  the  clouds,  which  kindly 
disappeared  at  the  proper  time  so  that  at  the  next  sun 
set  and  sunrise  we  saw,  as  a  reward  for  our  patient 
waiting,  one  of  the  most  magnificent  panoramas  in  the 
world. 

The  following  morning,  Sunday,  we  started  down 
the  hill  together,  happy,  satisfied,  pleased  with  our 
selves  and  each  other.  When  we  reached  the  level  of 
the  lake  we  discovered  that  there  was  no  possible  boat 
to  take  us  back  to  Luzerne  for  several  hours.  We  sat 
about  contentedly  enough,  when  out  of  a  little  hotel  in 
front  of  us  quietly  walked  a  gentleman  known  to  me 
by  sight  and  the  subject,  with  two  exceptions,  of  my 
greatest  admiration  among  living  Americans.  I  said: 

"  Why,  there  's  General  McClellan  !  " 

My  two  unknown  companions  jumped  up,  rushed 
toward  the  General,  who  kissed  them  both — they  were 
only  boys — and,  after  some  little  surprised  talk,  took 
them  into  the  house.  In  a  few  moments  one  of  my 
new-made  friends  reappeared  and  said: 

"  The  General  has  asked  us  to  lunch  with  him  and 
to  bring  you  with  us  but  we  don't  know  your  name 
and  can't  introduce  you." 


letters  from  Xon&on          129 

I  told  them  what  and  who  I  was — not  much  of  any- 
body — and  I  said: 

1  *  But,  I  have  no  idea  of  your  identity. ' ' 

"  Oh,"  said  my  interlocutor,  "  I  am  Loyal  Farragut 
and  the  other  fellow  is  *  Bob  '  Lincoln." 

General  McClellan  treated  us  most  kindly  and  that 
was  the  curious  beginning  of  my  acquaintance  with 
him,  and  my  friendship  with  the  sons  of  the  two  heroes 
who,  with  McClellan,  I  had  most  worshipped  and 
revered  during  the  whole  course  of  the  Civil  War. 

In  a  series  of  letters  from  London,  subjects  from 
grave  to  gay  were  touched  upon,  as  occasion  war 
ranted.  One  entire  season  I  dwelt  among  and  upon 
the  London  churches,  old  and  new;  from  Spurgeon,  in 
his  crowded  tabernacle,  to  the  rector  of  some  little 
chapel  in  ' '  The  City  ' '  who  read  his  services  to  a  pew- 
opener,  a  beadle,  a  company  of  choir-boys,  and  a  con 
gregation  of  five  or  six.  The  latter  were  generally 
paupers  dependent  upon  the  parish  and  obliged  to  ap 
pear  every  Sunday  under  penalty  of  the  loss  of  the 
weekly  dole  of  a  sixpence  or  a  quartern  loaf,  left,  in 
perpetuity,  by  some  Lord  Mayor,  dead  and  forgotten  in 
the  long,  long  agoes.  How  the  fashionable  preachers 
in  the  West  End  preached,  and  where  they  preached, 
and  to  whom,  was  one  of  the  themes.  A  beautiful  Sun 
day  was  devoted  to  the  Foundling  Hospital,  where 
little  children  come  and  are  not  forbidden.  Pray  do 
not  miss  it  when  you  go  to  London  next.  It  will 
move  to  do  better  and  to  be  better  even  the  men  and 


130  Galfce  in  a  library 

women  who  have  known  no  children  of  their  own. 
Another  Sunday  was  devoted  to  the  chapel  of  the 
Charter  House,  the  place  of  worship  of  the  Poor 
Brethren  so  familiar  to  the  friends  of  Colonel  New- 
come,  where  more  attention  was  paid  to  the  reading  of 
the  memorial  tablets  to  Thackeray  and  John  Leech,  I 
am  afraid,  than  to  the  reading  of  the  Gospels  or  the 
Lessons.  Do  not  miss  that  either  when  you  go  to 
London,  if  it  is  left  intact  by  the  Directors  of  the  Mer 
chant  Tailors'  School  who  reign  there  now. 

Another  summer  was  given  up  to  the  theatres,  par 
ticularly  to  the  theatres  little  known.  Still  another 
summer  was  spent  among  the  coffee-houses,  especially 
among  those  of  literary  association :  "  The  Chapter,"  the 
home  once  for  a  very  short  time  of  Charlotte  and  Emily 
Bronte;  "  The  Black  Jack,"  in  Portsmouth  Street,  so 
intimately,  associated  with  Mr.  John  Sheppard,  the 
Highwayman,  and  with  Mr.  Joseph  Miller,  the  wit  and 
the  player;  "  The  Feathers,"  in  Hand  Court,  Holborn, 
familiar  to  Charles  Lamb;  "  The  Salutation  and  Cat," 
in  Newgate  Street,  now  "  The  Salutation"  only,  but 
very  little  changed  except  in  name,  where  Coleridge 
and  Southey  had  "sat  together  through  the  winter 
nights,  beguiling  the  cares  of  life  with  Poesy,"  and 
the  like.  Many  were  the  letters  about  the  squares  of 
London,  about  the  monuments,  about  the  gardens,  par 
ticularly  about  those  of  the  Temple;  about  the  Inns 
of  Court  and  all  the  memories  they  brought  up;  and 
about  such  current  events  as  the  first  visit  of  the  Shah 


©ne  Ikinfc  of  Journalism 


of  Persia  or  the  funeral  of  poor  Henry  Kingsley.  All 
at  seven  dollars  a  column,  not  regularly  paid  ! 

It  is  a  little  disgraceful  to  admit  that  many  of  these 
letters  dated  in  London  were  written  in  New  York  ! 
Not  a  great  deal  of  Kuropean  news  came  in  those  days 
to  this  country  by  cable;  distances  were  considered 
too  great,  and  rates  too  high.  But  all  the  foreign  ex 
changes  were  read  as  soon  as  they  arrived  in  the  ed 
itorial  rooms  or  in  the  Mercantile  Library;  and  by 
means  of  a  certain  topographical  knowledge  of  the 
British  metropolis,  and  a  familiarity  with  its  inhabit 
ants  and  their  tricks  and  their  manners,  it  was  not  at 
all  impossible  to  give  a  lucid  account  of  what  happened 
every  week.  The  Queen's  "Drawing  Rooms"  were 
described,  the  Lord  Mayor's  Show;  the  opening  of  a 
new  playhouse;  the  reconstruction  of  an  old  club;  a 
great  Parliamentary  debate;  the  crowning  of  a  bishop; 
a  suicide  from  Waterloo  bridge;  baby-farming;  or  a 
birth  or  a  marriage  in  the  Royal  Family  —  with  all  the 
accustomed  accuracy  of  an  eye-witness  —  who  was 
three  thousand  miles  away  !  It  is  not  known  that 
anybody  was  deceived,  but  nobody  was  seriously 
harmed,  and  no  little  practice  and  experience  were 
gained  from  it.  Still  at  seven  dollars  a  column  ! 

The  funeral  of  Henry  Kingsley  I  attended  in  person, 
moved  thereto  by  feelings  of  sincere  sympathy  as 
well  as  by  professional  reasons.  I  had  always  admired 
the  works  of  the  man.  I  still  think  that  there  are 
no  heartier,  more  healthful,  more  cheerful  out-of-door 


132  Galfcs  in  a  library 

tales  than  Ravenshoe  and  The  Hillyars  and  The  Bur 
tons,  and  no  stories  were  ever  more  fascinating  to  me 
than  are  the  fantastic  vagaries  of  Oakshot  Castle  and 
Number  Seventeen  in  which  the  majority  of  the  char 
acters  are  lunatics,  amiable  or  dangerous,  and  in  all 
stages  of  eccentric  dementia. 

I  had  never  seen  the  man;  and  nothing  could  be 
learned  of  his  nature  or  individuality.  He  was  not 
known  to  the  clubs  of  Literary  Bohemia  in  L,oudon, 
and  he  seemed  to  have  no  friends  in  town.  The  little 
Kentish  hamlet  in  which  he  had  spent  the  last  years  of 
his  life  was  two  hours  or  more  from  the  metropolis  on 
a  branch  railway,  involving  many  changes.  While  I 
was  feeling  my  way  to  the  place  in  the  I^ondon  Station, 
asking  many  questions  from  railway  guards  and  book 
ing  agents,  I  was  accosted  by  a  stranger  who  said  he 
fancied  we  were  going  on  the  same  sad  errand,  and 
that  if  I  would  enter  his  compartment  he  would  take 
me  safely  to  the  spot.  My  business  and  nationality 
were  told;  it  was  explained  that  the  journey  was  not 
taken  out  of  mere  idle  curiosity  nor  from  a  desire  to 
earn  the  traditional  penny-a-line,  but  from  a  spirit  of 
pure  affection  for  and  admiration  of  Kingsley's  literary 
qualities.  And  then  it  was  discovered  that  the  stranger 
was  a  near  neighbour  of  the  Kingsleys,  and  the  owner 
of  the  interesting  little  old  place  in  which  Henry  had 
lived,  the  Grange,  whose  garden  was  the  scene  of  the 
novelist's  own  death  and  of  the  last  tale  he  wrote. 
From  this  gentleman  much  was  learned  concerpjng  the 


jfuneral  of  Ibenr?  IRineelei?      133 

man  and  his  life  and  his  surroundings;  and  all  that 
was  learned  was  good  and  pleasant  to  hear  and  to 
record.  It  seemed  that  the  author  had  put  not  a  little 
of  himself  and  of  his  own  people  in  his  stories.  I 
learned  upon  whom  the  different  creations  were  based 
and  how  far  they  were  real  and  how  far  elaborated;  and 
I  was  told  that  I  should  meet  the  original  "  Hetty," 
which  I  did. 

My  informant  took  me  out  of  the  train  at  a  side- 
station;  drove  me,  in  his  own  dog-cart,  to  his  own 
house;  shared  with  me  his  luncheon;  carried  me  to  the 
quiet,  peaceful  churchyard  in  which  Kingsley  was  to 
rest;  and  stood  by  my  side  as  the  gentle  novelist  was 
laid  in  his  grave.  I  was  introduced  to  the  family  doc 
tor  and  to  the  rector  of  the  parish,  both  of  whom  knew 
Kingsley  well  and  loved  him;  and  "  Hetty  "  herself  it 
was  who  picked  and  handed  me  the  little  bunch  of 
rosemary  which  I  laid  upon  the  coffin — for  remem 
brance. 

I  went  back  to  London  with  my  accidental  host  and 
we  never  met  again.  When  we  exchanged  cards  on 
parting  at  the  railway  terminus  I  read  upon  his,  en 
graven,  the  words,  "  Samuel  Weller,  Esquire." 

And  thus  there  was  a  little  touch  of  reminiscent 
comedy  in  the  tragedy,  after  all. 

I  did  not  confine  myself  altogether,  in  those  early 
days,  to  my  generally  accepted  contributions  to  the 
Mail.  I  wrote  regularly  for  the  Arcadian,  a  weekly 
literary  and  dramatic  journal,  from  which  I  received 


134  Galhs  in  a 


nothing  in  the  way  of  remuneration  or  salary  except  as 
many  copies  of  the  paper  as  I  cared  to  send  away  by 
post  or  to  carry  away  in  my  pocket;  with  now  and 
then,  thrown  in,  a  new  bcok  or  a  new  edition  which  I 
had  been  asked  to  review.  And  I  wrote  essays  and 
stories,  grave  and  gay,  which  were  submitted  —  aiming 
high  always  —  to  \hz  Harper's,  Scribner's,  The  Princeton 
Review,  Old  and  New,  and  the  like;  "  return-postage" 
enclosed.  And  they  invariably  came  back  with  the 
stereotyped  note  of  thanks  and  regret.  It  was  very 
discouraging;  and  the  efforts  were  nearly  given  up 
in  despair,  when  a  short  paper  entitled,  "  Mothers  in 
Fiction,"  was  printed  in  "The  Contributors'  Club" 
of  the  Atlantic  \  and  gave  me  fresh  hope.  It  attempted 
to  prove  that  in  fiction  there  are  no  mothers,  to  speak 
of,  except  step-mothers  and  mothers-in-law  and  un 
natural  mothers  or  mothers  who  die  young.  It  gave  a 
long  list  of  leading  characters  in  standard  tales  who 
were  half-orphans  on  their  mother's  side,  and  it  showed 
that  Becky  Sharp  brought  herself  up  by  hand,  while 
Topsey  "just  growed." 

The  article  excited  some  little  attention  and  no  lit 
tle  consideration.  "Mothers  in  Fiction"  was  dis 
cussed  all  over  the  country;  and  mothers,  good,  bad, 
and  indifferent,  whom  I  had  forgotten  or  of  whom  I 
had  never  heard,  poured  in  upon  "  The  Contributor's 
Club"  in  great  quantities. 

The  general  drift  of  public  opinion  concerning  the 
Literary  Life,  and  concerning  those  who  live  the  Liter- 


3ournalistic  IRates  135 

ary  Life,  was  vividly  shown  by  a  Census-taker  who 
once  interviewed  me  in  the  interests  of  the  Government 
of  the  United  States.  He  asked  me  the  regular  ques 
tions,  all  printed  in  regular  rotation,  and  he  inscribed 
my  answers  in  a  very  irregular  hand.  He  wanted  to 
know  my  name,  my  age,  the  place  of  my  birth;  the 
names  of  my  father  and  mother,  and  the  places  of 
their  birth.  He  inquired  the  number  of  wives  and 
children  I  had,  or  had  had,  and  their  names  and  the 
places  of  their  birth.  He  asked  if  I  was  white  or 
black  and  what  was  my  business  or  occupation.  To 
this  last  query  I  replied,  with  some  hesitation,  that  I 
was  a  "  Man  of  Letters."  And  without  a  moment's 
hesitation,  or  a  sign  of  any  change  of  voice  or  expres 
sion,  he  asked  the  next  regular  question,  "  Can  you 
read  and  write  ? ' ' 

It  was  a  fortunate  thing,  indeed,  that  I  have  never 
been  dependent  upon  my  pen  for  my  daily  bread. 
"The  writer's  cramp"  is  generally  a  pecuniary  dis 
ease.  For  literary  production,  even  for  the  best,  the 
prices  paid  are  comparatively  low  and  the  beginner 
works  on  starvation  wages;  being  lucky,  sometimes, 
to  find  wages  at  all.  The  periodical  which  offered 
me  a  fraction  of  a  cent  per  word,  in  the  early  days, 
occasionally  defaulted  altogether  or  paid  in  orders 
upon  advertising  trades-people  who  had  themselves 
defaulted.  The  only  remuneration  received  for  what 
their  author  considered  a  rather  important  series  of 
articles  was  a  suit  of  clothes  which  he  did  not  really 


136  Galfcs  in  a  library 

need  and  which  was  made  by  an  English  tailor  who 
had  not  been  able  to  pay  for  the  publication  of  the  fact 
that,  in  his  own  country,  he  had  fitted  a  valet  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  and  had  also  been  permitted  to  manu 
facture  liveries  for  the  families  of  the  rest  of  the  British 
aristocracy.  He  did  not  seem  to  appreciate  my  patron 
age  and  he  used  "  farmer 's-sa tin  "  linings  when  his 
contract  demanded  silk.  The  collar  came  too  high  in 
the  neck,  it  is  remembered;  one  leg  of  the  trousers 
was  longer  than  the  other;  and  he  absolutely  refused 
to  renew  a  waistcoat  button — without  extra  charge  ! 

In  this  way  I  bartered  my  brains  for  a  number  of  ob 
jects  which  were  neither  useful  nor  ornamental  until  I 
was  offered  a  fireplace  heater  for  some  months  of 
dramatic  criticism  —  at  which  I  struck.  The  heater 
was  to  be  put  in  its  place  at  my  individual  expense  and 
I  had  no  place  in  which  to  put  it.  But  I  enjoyed  the 
life.  And  I  gained  in  experience. 

The  subsequent  career  of  some  of  my  rejected  manu 
scripts — then  and  later — is  worth  putting  on  record. 
One  particular  article,  written  to  order  for  Harper's 
Weekly,  was  rejected  in  turn  by  every  one  of  the  Harper 
periodicals  and  by  half  a  dozen  other  journals  to  which 
it  was  submitted.  It  finally  appeared  in  Kate  Field1  s 
Washington,  when  that  bright  but  unfortunate  paper 
started  upon  its  brief  course,  and  it  was  accepted  in  lieu 
of  a  year's  subscription  !  It  was  a  semi-traditional, 
semi-historical,  altogether  satirical  effort  to  prove  that 
Bacon  and  Shakespeare,  as  the  sons  of  Queen  Eliza- 


's  Hnecbote         137 


beth,  might  have  been  half-brothers,  collaborating  in 
defence  of  their  grandmamma,  Anne  Bullen,  as  she  is 
portrayed  in  the  tragedy  of  King  Henry  the  VIIL 
Curiously  enough  it  was  accepted  seriously  and  quoted 
almost  in  full  by  one  of  the  editors  who  had  refused  it, 
and,  more  curiously  still,  it  became  the  very  corner 
stone  of  a  volume  in  the  "American  Essayist  Series" 
published  by  the  Harpers  themselves,  upon  which  the 
Harpers  are  still  paying  a  generous  royalty. 

It  may  be  mentioned,  in  passing,  that  the  royalties 
on  the  first  edition  of  a  fairly  successful  book  will, 
ordinarily,  amount  to  a  sum  large  enough  to  almost  re 
munerate  the  author  for  what  he  pays  for  the  volumes 
he  gives  to  those  of  his  friends  who  expect  to  receive 
and  sometimes  demand  "  presentation  copies  "! 

With  regard  to  royalties  and  presentation  copies, 
Mrs.  Kate  Douglas  Wiggin  Riggs  tells  the  following 
little  story  on  herself. 

She  was  reading  one  night  in  public,  in  some  far 
away  and  inaccessible  town  in  what  are  called  "  the 
Western  wilds,"  when  she  noticed  in  her  audience  a 
poorly  but  neatly  clad  man  in  the  front  row  of  seats 
who  was  watching  her  intently  and  was  evidently  most 
appreciative  and  profoundly  moved  by  her  own  way  of 
expressing,  verbally,  her  own  thoughts.  At  the  close 
of  the  evening  he  diffidently  approached  her,  ventured 
to  shake  her  by  the  hand  and  to  explain  that  it  had 
been  a  great  treat  to  him  to  hear  her;  that  he  and  his 
wife  wanted  to  come  to  the  show,  but  it  was  forty  miles 


138  £alfcs  in  a  library 

away  from  home;  that  both  of  them  could  not  leave 
the  house  and  children  for  the  necessary  two  days  and 
a  night  of  absence;  and  his  wife  had  urged  him,  wife- 
like,  to  take  the  advantage  of  the  outing  and  the  enter 
tainment;  and  he  closed  by  saying: 

11  We  have  read,  Mrs.  Wiggin,  all  the  books  you 
ever  wrote;  and,"  he  added  impressively,  "  we  've 
bought  one  of  them  ! ' ' 

The  calls  upon  the  purse,  and  the  time,  of  the  author, 
in  this  and  in  other  respects,  are  many  and  great.  In 
my  business  days  I  was  never  asked  to  contribute  a 
tub  of  butter  to  a  church  fair  or  a  box  of  cheese  to  a 
fresh-air  fund.  Since  my  name  has  appeared  now  and 
then  upon  book-covers  and  at  the  bottom  of  magazine 
pages.  I  am  frequently — much  more  frequently  than 
my  reputation  would  warrant — invited  to  write  my 
name  in  the  inside  of  a  book  and  to  present  both  the 
book  and  the  name  to  a  bazar  for  the  benefit  of  a  local 
charity  of  which  I  have  never  heard  and  in  which  I  can 
have  no  possible  personal  or  local  interest.  And, 
harder  still,  I  am  requested  to  prepare  articles  upon 
"  The  Amenities  of  Literature  "  or  upon  "The  Higher 
Education  of  the  Gentler  Sex  "  for  the  entertainment 
of  the  members  of  a  circle  of  Earnest  Women,  absolute 
strangers  to  me,  who  meet,  fortnightly,  in  some  distant 
town  I  have  never  visited  and  never  expect  to  visit. 
For  all  this  nothing  is  ever  given  in  return.  These 
same  Earnest  Women  might  beg  a  picture  from  a 
painter,  a  recital  from  a  pianist,  or  a  recitation  from  an 


IDemanbs  on  an  Hutbor        139 

actor,  but  they  would  hardly  think  of  asking  a  packer 
for  a  tin  of  pressed  beef  or  their  favourite  grocer  for  a 
pound  of  tea  to  be  consumed  at  the  fortnightly  luncheon 
which  invariably  follows  the  intellectual  symposium. 
And  yet  the  cheering  cup  and  the  strengthening  meat- 
extract  cost  less,  last  longer,  and  go  farther  than  does 
the  work  of  the  associates  of  the  Guild  of  Literature 
and  Art. 

The  least  objectionable  of  all  these  performances  are 
what  are  called  "Author's  Readings."  They  cost  the 
performer  nothing  but  a  little  time,  particularly  when 
his  expenses  are  paid,  as  not  infrequently  is  the  case; 
not  uncommonly  they  tickle  the  personal  pride  and 
vanity  which  all  authors  are  supposed  to  possess,  and 
not  impossibly  they  advertise  the  author  and  the  book 
which  he  interprets.  The  gratuitous,  contributed, 
original  article,  be  it  short  or  long,  is  a  more  serious 
matter.  It  is  a  donation  of  the  author's  stock  in  trade 
which  takes  the  daily  bread  out  of  his  own  mouth  and 
perhaps  out  of  the  mouths  of  those  who  are  dependent 
upon  him.  He  can  rarely  afford  to  give  away  some 
thing  which  has  more  than  a  real  money  value  to  him; 
for  if  he  does  not  need  the  money,  he  needs  or  he  thinks 
he  needs  the  publicity  and  the  reputation,  even  the 
criticism  and  the  accompanying  contentment,  which 
are  better  than  wealth  ! 

The  professional  critic  is  not  so  great  a  trial  to  the 
professional  author  as  is  generally  supposed.  The 
author  may  have  been  and  may  still  be  a  critic  himself 


140  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

— and  he  knows  all  about  it.  He  tries  to  console  him 
self  with  the  thought  that  somebody  once  said — I  think 
it  was  Dr.  Johnson:  "Conceive  a  man  who  has  written 
what  he  hopes  will  live,  troubling  himself  about  a 
criticism  which  he  knows  will  die  ! ' '  Criticism  is 
sometimes  long-lived  ;  but  no  matter  how  strong  it  may 
be  at  birth,  it  does  not,  except  in  rare  instances,  sur 
vive  the  work  it  commends  or  condemns.  The  critic, 
in  return,  is  a  favourite  target  for  the  verbal  shafts  of 
the  author,  who  often  hits  the  bull's-eye.  But  the 
author  likes  to  be  shot  at  all  the  same,  and  he  would 
rather  be  struck  by  the  sharp  arrow  of  the  professional 
critic  and  wounded  in  a  tender  part  than  not  to  be 
made  a  mark  of  at  all.  Disraeli  thought  that  he  fired 
with  a  deadly  aim  when  he  made  Mr.  Phoebus,  in 
Lothair  say:  "The  critics  are  the  men  who  fail  in  liter 
ature  and  art";  but  that  was  because  Disraeli  himself 
had  not  been  very  successful  as  a  critic  ! 

The  critic  who  is  apt  to  hurt  the  most  and  to  hit  the 
hardest  is  the  domestic  or  the  social  critic  ;  the  intimate 
member  of  the  family  circle  or  the  familiar  acquaintance 
of  the  drawing-room  or  the  club,  who  says  frankly,  and 
in  what  he  considers  so  kindly  a  way,  just  what  he 
thinks  about  one's  work.  His  opinion  may  be  of  no 
critical  value — but  it  hurts  !  If  what  he  says  is  com 
plimentary,  you  fancy  that  it  is  perfunctory  and  some 
times  you  imagine  that  it  is  patronising  and  it  makes 
no  particular  impression  ;  but  if  it  is  depreciatory  you 
are  sure  he  means  it ;  you  look  upon  it  as  the  average 


Criticism  tbat  Iburta 


view;  you  realise  that  he  represents  the  general  public; 
you  feel  that  if  you  cannot  please  him  you  cannot 
please  anybody  else. 

Shortly  after  I  had  taken  charge  of  the  department 
of  "  Literary  Notes"  in  Harper's  Magazine  and  after 
my  name  had  appeared  upon  the  cover  of  the  periodical 
for  a  few  months,  I  met,  by  chance  in  a  street-car,  a 
lady  with  whom  I  had  had  for  a  long  time  some  slight 
acquaintance.  She  was  a  good  woman  who  had  never 
enjoyed  the  advantages  of  what  we  call  "a  liberal  educa 
tion  ";  and  who,  I  supposed,  never  read  anything  but 
the  daily  papers  and  the  signs  in  the  streets.  As  she 
made  room  for  me  on  the  seat  next  to  her,  she  said 
abruptly  and  apropos  of  nothing:  "  Me  and  my  girls 
have  been  a  readin'  of  them  reviews  of  yourn.  And 
we  come  to  the  conclusion  that  you  done  better  when 
you  writ  books  nor  when  you  criticised  'em!"  The 
diction  was  so  peculiar  that  it  burned  itself  into  my 
memory,  and  it  has  remained  there;  the  sentiment  was 
so  discouraging  that  it  scarified  my  feelings  ;  and  I  still 
bear  the  brand.  I  would  no  more  have  respected  her 
dictum  regarding  the  literary  efforts  of  anybody  else 
than  I  would  have  minded  the  barking  of  an  honest 
dog  or  the  whistling  of  the  summer  winds  ;  but  what 
she  said  of  my  own  attempts  nearly  broke  my  spirit  in 
twain.  She  did  not  even  say  that  '  '  I  done  well  '  '  when 
I  wrote  books  ;  but  she  did  say  that  '  *  I  done  worse  '  ' 
when  I  criticised  'em.  And  it  hurt  ! 

I  slept  very  little  that  night.     No  comforting  speech 


142  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibran? 

of  my  wife  could  reduce  the  inflammation.  I  repeated 
the  words  to  my  friends — always  verbatim — and  I  pre 
tended  to  laugh  over  them ;  but  I  was  almost  dis 
heartened,  and  I  even  went  so  far  as  to  tell  the  Harpers 
that  I  feared  I  had  mistaken  my  vocation  and  that  I 
would  advise  them  to  find  some  one  in  my  place  who 
could  better  do  the  work  and  give  more  satisfaction  to 
the  great  reading  public. 

All  this  happened  many  years  ago.  I  have  * ' noticed  ' ' 
hundreds,  if  not  thousands  of  books  in  the  meantime. 
And  I  am  not  sure  that  * '  I  done  better "  as  I  went 
carefully  along. 

In  the  winter  of  1896-7  I  prepared  an  article  for 
Harper's  Magazine,  upon  the  personal  side  and  upon 
the  home-life  of  half  a  dozen  popular  actors,  as  I 
had  seen  them  and  had  known  them,  during  many 
years  of  intimate  personal  intercourse.  I  wanted  to 
show  to  the  world,  which  only  sees  the  public  side  of 
him,  that  a  man  can  be  a  good  actor,  and  a  good  son, 
a  good  husband,  a  good  father,  a  good  friend — and  a 
gentleman,  as  well ! 

The  Players,  in  the  olden  days  and  in  the  Old  World 
were  classed  in  statute-books  with  "  rogues  and  vaga 
bonds."  In  the  New  World  and  even  in  the  Old,  to-day, 
they  are  regarded,  when  they  so  conduct  themselves, 
as  gentlemen  by  behaviour  if  not  by  birth.  In  mon 
archical  lands  any  man  may  become  a  gentleman  if 
his  sovereign  deigns  to  dub  him  one ;  in  these  United 
States  of  ours  the  only  gentleman  is  the  man  who  re- 


Gbe  personal  pronoun        143 

spects  himself  and  who  respects  the  feelings  of  others  ! 
Booth,  Barrett,  McCullough,  Florence,  Wallack,  and 
Montague  respected  the  feelings  of  others,  and  they 
respected  themselves.  And  I  thought  the  public  ought 
to  know  it  so  far  as  it  was  in  my  power  and  in  my 
right  to  make  it  known. 

In  the  article  in  question  I  quoted  scraps  of  letters 
and  bits  of  conversation,  generally,  as  was  natural, 
addressed  to  me ;  I  showed,  as  far  as  was  possible  and 
proper,  the  tender  and  the  affectionate,  the  humorous 
and  the  pathetic  nature  of  these  men  as  I  had  seen  and 
felt  it ;  I  tried  to  make  my  readers  laugh  and  I  tried  to 
make  my  readers  cry.  My  anecdotes  were  all  true  as  I 
knew  by  observation,  not  by  hearsay  ;  all  the  incidents 
I  related  were  actual  occurrences  in  which  I  had  played 
some  more  or  less  important  part,  as  subject  of  their 
speech  or  deed,  or  as  an  eye-witness.  My  object  was, 
simply,  to  present  my  own  personal  reminiscences  of 
the  friends  of  many  years'  standing,  and  this,  as  well 
as  I  could,  I  did. 

When  the  paper  was  completed,  it  was  submitted  to 
the  kindliest  and  at  the  same  time  the  most  justly 
severe  of  my  domestic  critics,  the  fire- tenders  of  my 
own  hearth ;  and  they  pronounced  it  too  personal  ! 
There  was  in  it,  they  thought,  too  much  of  ' '  me '  * 
and  ' '  mine  " ;  too  much  of ' '  I  "  and  ' '  myself. ' '  This 
I  myself  had  feared  and  had  tried  hard  to  avoid.  I 
then  proceeded  to  cut  "  myself"  as  loose  from  the 
manuscript  as  possible  without  destroying  the  sense  or 


i44  Galfcs  in  a  Xibran> 

the  consequence ;  and  when  I  was  through  with  the 
slaughter  there  was  almost  nothing  left  of  "mine  "  and 
of  "me."  "  I  "  was  eliminated;  but  so  was  everything 
else  that  would  make  the  paper  intelligible  or  of  any 
worth.  I  knocked  away  my  foundation  and  my  six 
stories  came  tumbling  down.  There  was  nothing  to  be 
done  but  to  rebuild  upon  a  new  plan,  and  the  eight  or 
ten  thousand  words  were  taken  out  of  the  first  person 
and  put  into  the  third,  at  no  small  expense  of  time  and 
trouble  and  mental  strain  and  to  the  no  little  confusion 
of  the  persons  themselves. 

I  told  my  tale,  in  order  to  make  it  seem  natural  and 
possible  and  real,  as  being  the  experiences  of  "A  Man 
I  Know."  And  I  seemed  to  mix  up  the  man  I  know 
with  the  men  he  knew  in  the  most  involved  way.  I 
went  off  the  track  entirely  with  the  impersonal  pronoun 
"one,"  always  a  very  dangerous  figure  of  speech. 
"  One  "  recalled  this  and  "  one  "  recalled  that,  but,  in 
the  end,  "one"  ran  away  with  "one"  altogether. 
With  the  "  him's  "  and  the  "  he's  "  it  was  quite  as  bad, 
and  not  infrequently  I  myself  could  not  tell  whether 
"he"  was  Booth  or  Hutton,  whether  "  him"  referred 
to  Montague  or  to  the  Man  I  Know  ! 

But  it  was  licked  into  something  that  looked  to  me 
like  shape,  and  it  was  presented  to  the  Editor-in-Chief, 
who  said  he  would  accept  it — if  I  would  put  it  in  the 
"  First  Person  !" 

The  original  copy,  altered  and  twisted  out  of  all 
shape,  had  been  destroyed  as  obscure  beyond  repair. 


Sting  of  Sarcasm         145 


And  an  entirely  new  edifice  had  to  be  erected  after  the 
primeval  model.  I  put  "  myself"  back,  but  I  left  out 
some  of  my  spirit  and  interest,  and  by  the  time  it  was 
finished  I  was  heartily  tired  of  "  myself"  and  almost 
tired  of  my  six  friends  —  in  that  connection.  And  I 
feared,  more  than  ever,  that  "me"  and  "mine"  were 
altogether  too  much  in  the  foreground,  altogether  too 
prominent. 

The  day  the  article  appeared  —  it  was  called  *  '  A 
Group  of  Players,  by  Laurence  Hutton  "  —  I  heard  a 
friendly  critic  of  the  club-circle  say,  as  I  entered  The 
Players'  Reading-room,  and  evidently  for  my  own  hear 
ing,  that  he  had  just  finished  a  paper  called  "A  Group 
of  Laurence  Hutton,  by  A  Pi,AYKR  !  " 

Everybody  laughed  and  I  pretended  to  laugh  !  It 
was  meant  to  be  funny.  It  certainly  was  very  clever. 
It  did  not  mean  to  be  cruel.  But  I  was  sure,  then, 
that  it  was  true. 

An  old  ex-sailor  man  lay  dying  in  his  bed,  one 
Christmas  Eve,  a  year  or  two  ago.  He  had  run  away 
to  sea  when  he  was  a  lad  of  ten  ;  he  had  worked  his 
hard  way  up  by  slow  degrees  from  cabin-boy  to  captain 
before  he  was  thirty;  he  had  commanded  a  brig,  called 
the  British  Queen,  sailing  from  Dundee  to  New  York 
for  a  decade  or  so  ;  when  a  modest  little  fortune  was 
bequeathed  to  him  and  he  retired  from  the  merchant- 
service,  married  a  wife  of  about  his  own  age,  and  settled 
on  shore.  In  his  eightieth  year  he  went  back  to  Scot- 


146  Galfce  in  a  Xibrarp 

land  to  end  his  days  in  his  native  land,  and  on  that 
Christmas  Eve  he  lay  quietly  dying — in  his  bed.  He 
had  not  known  the  sea  except  as  an  occasional  pass 
enger  for  almost  half  a  century  ;  but  in  the  supreme 
moment  it  all  came  back  to  him.  He  had  been  semi 
conscious  and  quite  silent  for  some  hours,  the  trained 
nurses  had  gone  off  for  much-needed  rest,  and  the  old 
captain  was  sleeping  peacefully  by  the  side  of  his  old 
wife,  his  feeble  old  hand  in  hers.  Suddenly  he  raised 
himself  to  a  sitting  posture,  put  his  hand  to  his  old 
grey  head,  pulled  his  forelock,  and  in  a  loud,  firm 
voice  he  reported  himself,  in  the  regulation  way,  say 
ing,  "Come  on  board,  Sir!"  For  some  minutes  he 
gave  orders  and  obeyed  them.  He  "  manned  the  fore- 
top."  He  "  put  her  helm  hard-a-starboard."  He 
hauled  sheets  ;  he  sang  sea-songs  ;  and  then,  as  he  fell 
back  on  his  pillow,  he  cried  "  Belay  all!  "  Turning  to 
the  old  wife,  his  old  hand  again  in  hers,  he  murmured 
gently:  "  My  ship  's  in  port,  Bess,  but  she  's  going  out 
with  the  tide.  I  can't  take  you  with  me,  on  this  voy 
age,  Bess,  but  you  '11  find  me  waiting  for  you  on  the 
shore,  Bess,  when  you  come  over  !  "  And,  so  saying, 
he  died. 

The  old  sailor-man  was  my  uncle,  the  last  of  his 
generation  ;  the  old  wife — for  whom  on  the  shore  he  is 
still  waiting — is  my  aunt.  And  the  story  is  absolutely 
true.  I  have  set  it  down  here  as  it  was  written  to  me 
by  my  cousin,  their  only  child,  on  that  Christmas  Day. 
With  a  broken  voice — my  voice  always  breaks  over  it 


IRebufee  147 


— I  once  tried  to  tell  it  to  a  certain  warm  friend  of  us 
all.  He  was,  without  meaning  it,  the  typical  repre 
sentative  of  the  amiable  critic  of  the  social  circle.  I 
added:  "  It  seems  to  me  to  be  a  beautiful  incident. 
The  '  Come  on  board,  Sir! '  and  the  '  Belay  all  ! '  are 
better  than  the  '  Here! '  of  Natty  Bumpo,  or  even 
than  the  famous  ' Adsum  ! '  of  Colonel  Newcome,  be 
cause  they  are  true.  It  is  almost  too  touching  and  too 
sweet  a  story  in  its  moral  lesson  to  remain  unuttered. 
Some  day  I  '11  put  it  in  print,  I  think  !  " 

Turning  on  me  savagely,  the  friendly  critic  said,  his 
own  voice  breaking,  "  You  writing-fellows  would  tear 
out  your  heart-strings  to  tie  up  a  magazine  article  !  " 

The  rebuke  was  a  harsh  one.  But,  perhaps,  it  was 
just.  And  it  hurt.  I  have  never  ventured  to  tell  the 
story,  in  public,  but  once  before. 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Collecting  of  the  Death  Masks— Benjamin  Franklin- 
Robert  Burns— Charles  XII.  of  Sweden —Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan — Coleridge— John  Boyle  O'Reilly — Napoleon. 

THE  story  of  the  collecting  of  the  casts  from  life  and 
death  now  in  the  University  Library  at  Princeton  is, 
to  me  at  least,  almost  as  curious  as  is  the  collection 
itself.  The  first  of  them  came  into  my  life  in  a  purely 
accidental  and  unexpected  way  at  which  I  have  merely 
hinted  in  Portraits  in  Plaster — my  book  upon  the  sub 
ject, —  and,  for  some  five-and-thirty  years  now,  they 
have  occupied  not  a  small  portion  of  my  life's  interest 
and  entertainment. 

Walking  up-town  in  New  York  one  summer  after 
noon  in  the  middle  sixties,  I  noticed  in  a  shop  window 
near  where  the  old  and  original  Broadway  Theatre 
used  to  stand  a  most  grotesquely  ugly  image  of  a  bull 
dog  done  in  plaster.  Across  his  pedestal  was  the 
legend  "  Who  's  afraid? "  And  in  every  lineament  of 
his  expressive  countenance  was  written  the  fact  that 
he  certainly  was  afraid  of  nothing,  human  or  canine. 
What  struck  me  particularly  about  his  appearance  was 
his  astonishing  resemblance,  notwithstanding  his  fe 
rocity,  to  one  of  the  gentlest  of  all  the  gentle  old  ladies 

148 


149 


of  my  acquaintance,  an  old  lady  known  to  everybody 
as  "Aunt  Jane,"  who  trembled  at  the  sound  of  her 
own  voice  and  who  shuddered  at  the  sight  of  her  own 
shadow. 

I  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  buy  the  dog, 
and  while  he  was  being  tied  up  for  me  a  small  and 
ragged  boy  entered  the  place  and  showed  to  the  dealer 
the  cast  of  a  human  face,  brown  with  dust  and  yellow 
with  age,  saying  :  "  Is  dis  wort'  anything  ?  " 

The  merchant  did  not  seem  to  think  that  it  was 
worth  anything,  but  to  me  it  appeared  to  have  a  value, 
and  I  asked  the  vendor  what  he  wanted  for  it  and 
where  it  came  from.  Two  shillings  was  the  price  of  it, 
and  for  another  quarter  he  would  show  me  where  there 
were  a  lot  more  ! 

It  was  unmistakably  a  cast  of  the  face  of  Benjamin 
Franklin  and  it  suggested  Houdon's  famous  bust,  al 
though  it  did  not  seem  to  be  a  cast  or  a  copy  of  that 
familiar  and  frequently  copied  piece  of  sculpture.  I 
lost  my  interest  in  the  dog  and  turned  all  my  attention 
to  the  philosopher,  following  the  boy  to  Second  Street 
opposite  the  Marble  Cemetery  where,  in  a  couple  of 
ash-barrels,  I  found  casts  of  the  skulls  of  Burns  and 
Bruce  and  of  the  flesh-covered  head  of  Curran  —  all 
labelled, —  and  of  the  faces  —  unlabelled  —  of  a  small 
group  of  men  whom  I  afterwards  thought  I  had  recog 
nised  as  Washington,  Sheridan,  Cromwell,  Lord 
Brougham,  and  others  in  various  exalted  walks  of  life. 

I  gave  the  boy  the  extra  quarter  for  his  discovery 


150  £alhs  in  a 


and  still  another  twenty-five  cents,  all  in  postal-cur 
rency,  to  find  for  me  an  express  wagon  on  First 
Avenue.  He  came  back  with  the  empty  cart  of  a 
peddler  of  vegetables  and  fruits  ;  and  I  can  still  remem 
ber  the  sensation  I  created  when  I  rode  up  to  my  own 
door  in  that  vehicle,  sitting  by  the  coatless  driver,  with 
my  treasure-trove  —  including  the  image  of  the  dog  — 
packed  in  cherry-crates  behind  me.  The  father, 
smoking  his  after-tea  pipe,  on  the  "  front  stoop," 
fancied  that  I  had  lost  my  senses  or  my  dignity  ;  the 
live  terrier  by  his  side  nearly  barked  his  head  off  at  the 
sight  of  the  sculptured  bull-pup  I  presented  to  him  ; 
and  the  mother  laughed  until  the  tears  rolled  down  her 
cheeks  at  the  caricature  of  dear  Aunt  Jane. 

The  seniors  of  the  family  were,  however,  quite  as 
much  impressed  with  the  acquisition  as  I  was,  if  not 
more  so;  for  they  knew  what  death  masks  were,  while 
I  had  never  even  heard  of  them.  My  father,  who  was 
a  student  of  everything,  had  studied  physiognomy  in 
the  pages  of  L,avater  and  on  the  faces  of  the  men  and 
women  he  met  and  knew;  and  after  careful  comparison 
with  the  engraved  portraits  in  our  possession  we  suc 
ceeded,  as  we  thought,  in  identifying  all  the  casts.  I 
was  sent  the  next  evening  to  learn,  if  possible,  the 
history  of  the  collection  ;  but  that  particular  block  on 
Second  Street  was  literally  lined  with  ash-barrels  none 
of  which  I  could  recognise  ;  and  I  was  forced  to  ring  a 
half-dozen  basement  bells,  meeting  with  all  sorts  of 
discomforting  rebuffs,  before  my  question  was  answered. 


Details  of  tbe  Collecting 


At  last  a  sort  of  housekeeper  or  upper-  servant  told  me 
gruffly  enough  that  the  master  of  that  particular  man 
sion  had  lately  died  ;  that  the  masks  had  been  con 
tained  in  a  cabinet  in  his  study,  taking  up  valuable 
room  for  many  years,  and  that  the  lady  of  the  house, 
always  hating  the  ''nasty,  ghastly  things,"  had  finally 
given  orders  to  throw  them  away  !  Foolishly,  as  my 
father  told  me,  I  did  not  think  to  ask  the  gentleman's 
name  or  his  profession  ;  I  had  not  the  courage  to  face 
the  domestic  again,  and  I  do  not  know,  to  this  day, 
anything  about  the  man  or  his  business. 

I  gave  the  matter  of  original  ownership  very  little 
thought  although  I  gave  much  thought  to  the  casts 
themselves  for  a  quarter  of  a  century.  When,  in  1889 
or  1890,  at  the  suggestion  of  Mr.  James  R.  Osgood,  I 
began  for  Harper1  s  Magazine  the  series  of  articles  upon 
which  my  book  is  based,  I  discovered  that  there  was  an 
absolute  dearth  of  literature  upon  the  subject  of  that 
particular  form  of  "  Portraits  in  Plaster  "  ;  and  my  read 
ing  for  many  months  was  of  the  most  harrowing  and 
melancholy  kind,  consisting,  as  it  did,  almost  ex 
clusively,  of  obituary  notices  and  death-bed  scenes.  I 
pored  over  accounts  of  lyings-in-state,  of  post-mortem 
procedure,  and  of  funeral  services  ;  studying  carefully 
the  histories  of  the  last  sad  hours  of  all  sorts  and  con 
ditions  of  men  from  Ben  Caunt,  the  prize-fighter,  to  Sir 
Isaac  Newton  and  Frederick  the  Great,  trying  to  dis 
cover  if  a  death  mask  had  ever  been  made  of  any  of 
them,  and  if  so  by  whom  and  for  what  purpose, 


152  Ealfcs  in  a  Xibran? 

Very  rarely  was  any  allusion  made  to  what  seemed 
to  me  to  be  this  most  important  of  posthumous  per 
formances.  The  biographers  told  me  fully  and  in  de 
tail  who  read  the  services,  who  were  the  pall-bearers, 
sometimes  who  was  the  undertaker.  "  Who  saw  him 
die,  who  dug  the  grave,  who  tolled  the  bell,"  were  all 
carefully  reported,  without  a  word  as  to  who  made  an 
impression  of  the  rigid  features  to  be  handed  down  to 
posterity  in  exact  fac-simile,  perhaps  the  most  valuable 
and  correct  of  all  human  efforts  at  portraiture.  I  re 
ceived  much  useful  information  from  the  contributors 
to  the  British  Phrenological  Journal,  published  in  the 
thirties,  when  phrenology  was  a  craze  and  men  were 
supposed  to  be  known  by  their  bumps  alone  ;  but  this 
information  was  generally  of  an  historical  character,  as 
in  the  accounts,  not  infrequently  by  eye-witnesses  them 
selves,  of  the  exhumation  of  Robert  Burns,  of  Robert 
the  Bruce,  of  Henry  IV.  of  France,  or  of  the  Twelfth 
Charles  of  Sweden.  At  last,  in  the  Library  of  the 
British  Museum,  I  came  upon  a  volume  of  the  printed 
lectures  of  George  Combe,  the  phrenologist,  by  which 
I  think  I  have  solved  the  problem. 

This  work — long  out  of  print  and  rarely  to  be  met 
with — I  have  had  for  many  years  an  unlimited  order 
for  it  in  the  hands  of  the  British  and  American  dealers 
of  old  books  —  this  work  was  illustrated  throughout 
with  rough  wood -cuts  of  the  several  masks  I  found  in 
the  Second  Street  ash-barrel.  These,  in  various  posi 
tions,  front  face,  profile,  back  of  the  head,  for  compari- 


Convincing  Evidence          153 

son's  sake  were  frequently  repeated.  The  book  con 
tained  all  these  and  none  others  whatever !  And  the 
inference  so  lately  and  so  curiously  reached  must  be, 
that  the  man  of  the  cabinet  and  of  the  unsympathetic 
wife  was  a  friend,  or  a  disciple,  or  an  assistant  of 
Combe,  who  lectured  in  America  in  the  winter  of 
1838-9,  and  that  from  Combe  he  had  inherited  the 
casts  which  came  so  unexpectedly  into  my  hands  and 
which  formed  the  nucleus  of  the  collection  now  in  the 
Library  of  the  University  of  Princeton. 

While  a  number  of  workingmen,  in  the  early  part  of 
the  last  century,  under  government  supervision  were 
making  some  repairs  to  the  ruined  Abbey  of  Duuferm- 
line  in  Scotland,  they  dug  up  the  skeletons  of  a  man 
and  a  woman  which,  from  the  descriptions  of  the  inter 
ment  in  contemporary  records,  were  identified  as  those 
of  King  Robert  the  Bruce  and  his  Queen.  The  bones 
of  the  King  were  unusually  large  and  in  an  excellent 
state  of  preservation.  It  was  seen  that  the  ribs  on  the 
left  side  had  been  roughly  hewn  asunder  in  order  to 
permit  of  the  removal  of  his  heart,  which  Sir  James 
Douglas,  it  will  be  remembered,  carried  with  him  to 
Jerusalem  as  a  pious  and  a  talismanic  weapon  against 
the  raging  infidels.  The  skull  naturally  excited  an 
immense  amount  of  interest  in  Great  Britain,  particu 
larly  among  the  members  of  the  Phrenological  Society 
who  chanced  to  be  holding  a  meeting  at  that  time  in 
Edinburgh.  The  Crown  gave  them  permission  to 
make  a  cast  of  it  before  it  was  reburied  ;  and  this  cast 


154  Galfcs  in  a  library 

iu  the  course  of  events  came  into  the  possession  of 
George  Combe. 

In  digging  the  grave  of  the  widow  of  Robert  Burns, 
who  was  to  rest  by  the  side  of  her  husband  at  Dum 
fries,  the  skeleton  of  the  poet  was  disclosed ;  and  Dr. 
Blacklock,  a  local  surgeon,  was  permitted  to  make  an 
anatomical  examination  of  it  and  to  take  a  cast  of  the 
skull,  a  replica  of  which  was  given  to  Combe  by  the 
executors  of  Mrs.  Burns.  As  I  remarked  in  my  book, 
it  is  a  big  head — even  for  a  Scotchman  ! 

The  mask  of  Henry  IV.  of  France  was  for  a  long 
time  a  matter  of  uncertainty  to  me.  I  had  read  in  con 
temporary  memoirs  that  a  modeller  had  made  a  wax 
cast  of  the  monarch's  features  immediately  after  his 
death  and  that  this  wax  effigy  was  displayed  at  a  public 
funeral,  as  was  the  custom  in  those  days  ;  and  I  knew 
that  a  plaster  cast  of  the  same  dead  face  was  made 
many  years  later  when  the  wild  Revolutionists  sacked 
the  Cathedral  of  St.  Denis,  scattered  the  dust  of  the 
Valois  and  the  Bourbons  to  the  winds,  and  moulded 
their  leaden  coffins  into  bullets  with  which  to  mur 
der  their  descendants.  The  body  of  the  first  and 
the  greatest  of  the  Bourbons  had  been  so  well  and 
so  carefully  embalmed  that  it  was  exhibited  for  a 
number  of  days  to  enormous  crowds  of  curious  sight 
seers. 

The  Library  of  St.  Genevieve  in  Paris  contains  what 
is  claimed  to  be  the  "  original  mask"  of  Henry,  of 
which  this  is  a  copy ;  and  it  is  the  general  expert 


IDerificatione  155 


opinion  that  it  was  not  made  at  the  time  of  his  burial 
but  at  the  time  of  his  exhumation. 

About  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  his  death, 
the  body  of  Charles  XII.  of  Sweden  was  disinterred, 
although  in  a  reverent  and  proper  manner  and  to  satisfy 
a  curiosity  which  was  perhaps  justifiable.  Historians 
had  differed  as  to  whether  he  was  shot  from  before  or 
behind,  by  the  enemy  or  by  one  of  his  own  soldiers ; 
and  they  opened  his  grave  to  see  that  the  fatal  missile 
had  passed  entirely  through  the  King's  head  from  left 
to  right,  and  in  a  downward  direction.  In  my  cast  the 
indentures  are  plainly  perceptible,  especially  the  larger 
one  on  the  right  temple.  There  is  a  much  finer  copy 
of  this  mask  of  Charles  in  the  British  Museum,  be 
queathed  to  the  nation  by  Charles  Christy,  who  is  said 
to  have  bought  it  in  Stockholm  at  the  time  of  the  sale 
of  the  effects  of  a  famous  Swedish  sculptor.  The 
museum  authorities  and  others  believe  that  the  cast 
dates  only  from  the  occasion  of  the  long-delayed  post 
mortem  examination  ;  but  a  somewhat  rare  engraving 
of  it,  dated  1823,  states  that  "  it  was  made  four  hours 
after  he  was  shot." 

The  attempt  to  verify  the  death  mask  of  Richard 
Brinsley  Sheridan  was  peculiarly  difficult.  The  cast 
is  unquestionably  from  nature,  and  it  resembles  so 
strongly  in  so  many  facial  ways  the  existent  portraits 
of  the  author  of  The  School  for  Scandal,  particularly 
the  later  examples,  that  it  seems  to  establish  its  own 
identity ;  but,  except  that  it  was  known  to  Combe,  I 


156  aalhe  in  a  Xibrar? 

have  never  been  able  to  discover  any  authority  for  its 
existence.  Sheridan  died  in  very  miserable  and  pain 
ful  circumstances.  He  was  deeply  in  debt,  and  im 
prisonment  for  debt  was  at  that  time  possible  and 
frequent  under  the  laws  of  the  land.  The  sheriffs 
officers  were  in  the  place  during  his  last  hours;  and  the 
already  unconscious  but  still  breathing  debtor  narrowly 
escaped  being  carried  by  force  to  end  his  life  in  what 
was  called  a  ' '  sponging  house ' '  and  in  a  prison  bed. 

Mention  is  made  by  "Tom"  Moore,  Sheridan's 
biographer,  of  the  taking  of  a  cast  of  Sheridan's  right 
hand,  but  there  is  no  allusion  whatsoever  to  a  mould 
of  his  head.  This  cast  of  the  hand,  in  glaring  plaster, 
was  preserved  for  many  years  in  the  house  in  which 
the  last  days  of  his  life  were  spent  in  Savile  Row,  Lon 
don.  The  Savile  Club,  at  the  beginning  of  its  exist 
ence,  occupied  the  premises  ;  it  is  a  literary  association, 
and  it  was  fitting  that  the  fingers  which  held  so  facile  a 
literary  pen  in  that  spot  should  have  been  carefully  and 
reverently  portrayed  there.  They  were  kept  under  a 
glass  case  upon  which  some  member  of  the  club  had 
inscribed  the  lines: 

Good  at  a  fight, 

Better  at  a  play  ; 
God-like  in  giving, 

But  the  Devil  to  pay  ! 

Telling,  in  my  Literary  Landmarks  of  London  the 
story  of  the  passing  of  Sheridan,  I  alluded  to  this  fact, 
and  repeated  the  legend  that,  in  the  silent  hours  of  the 


Britisb  Xiteralness  157 

night  and  in  the  rooms  in  which  he  did  his  work,  the 
sound  of  the  scratching  of  Sheridan's  pen  was  still 
heard  by  the  fellows  of  his  guild  who  tried  to  do  good 
work  there  at  that  time.  The  idea,  not  mine  at  all,  I 
thought  a  rather  pretty  one  ;  and  I  myself  had  fancied 
over  many  a  late  and  lonely  cigar  in  that  library  that  I 
had  been  able  to  detect  the  ghost  of  the  squeak  of  the 
master's  quill.  But  I  was  rudely  disillusionised.  An 
author  not  unknown  to  fame  wrote  over  his  own  name 
to  one  of  the  British  literary  periodicals  to  state,  iii  all 
solemnity,  that  he  had  been  connected  with  the  organi 
sation  from  its  very  inception  ;  that  he  was  an  officer 
of  the  institution  ;  that  he  had  frequented  the  apart 
ment  in  question  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night ; 
and  that  he  had  never  heard,  and  had  never  heard  of 
anybody  else  having  heard,  the  scratching  of  Sheridan's 
pen  !  This,  coming  from  an  official  source,  seemed  to 
settle  the  matter  for  all  time  ! 

Mr.  Kruell,  a  well-known  and  a  very  clever  portrait 
engraver  on  wood,  and  naturally  an  astute  physiog 
nomist,  was  peculiarly  interested  in  the  collection  then 
contained  in  what  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  called  my  "  scul 
lery,"  and  he  made  more  than  one  semi-professional 
visit  to  it  during  his  work  upon  Lincoln's  and  other 
heads.  He  examined  with  the  eye  of  an  expert — in 
telligent  and  quick  of  apprehension — every  face  he  saw 
there  ;  recognising  some  of  them  at  a  glance  and  find 
ing  something  new,  to  him,  in  each  of  them.  Among 
the  warriors  he  discerned  certain  marks  and  lines  in 


158  tTalfce  in  a  Hibrar? 

common  ;  and  he  talked  most  entertainingly  upon  his 
subject  as  he  went  from  Washington  to  Cromwell,  from 
Charles  to  Frederick,  from  Sherman  to  Grant,  from 
Bonaparte  back,  always,  to  Bonaparte, 

"  And  who  is  this,"  he  said  at  last,  "  with  the  un 
usual  development,  next  to  Sherman  ?  " 

"  That,"  was  the  reply,  "  is  Sheridan." 

The  surprise  was  very  great. 

"  Sheridan  ?  "  he  cried;  "  Sheridan  with  that  mouth, 
with  that  nose,  with  that  chin  ?  ' ' 

"Yes,"  said  I,  "Sheridan!" 

"  Why,  this  man,"  taking  the  cast  in  his  hands  and 
carrying  it  carefully  to  the  window — "this  man  is  a 
poet  and  an  orator ;  a  man  of  exceedingly  ready  wit 
and  quick  fancy ;  a  man  of  slight  moral  sensibility  ;  a 
man  who  does  not  pay  his  debts  ;  a  man  politically  am 
bitious  ;  a  rake  and  a  libertine  in  heart  if  not  in  action  ; 
a  man  whose  natural  weapons  are  words,  not  swords." 

And  in  five  minutes  I  was  told  everything  I  had  read 
and  known  of  Sheridan  by  a  man,  as  I  afterwards 
learned,  who  had  never  even  heard  of  him.  He  had, 
of  course,  mistaken  the  playwright  for  the  cavalry- 
leader  ;  and  in  the  Sheridan  before  him,  protesting 
constantly  that  it  could  not  possibly  be  Sheridan,  he 
found  everything  that  he  knew  Sheridan  was  not  and 
nothing  that  he  supposed  Sheridan  to  be.  The  scene 
impressed  me  with  the  fact  that  there  is  a  good  deal  in 
the  science  of  physiognomy  after  all ! 

The  gentle  Irish  poet,  who  must  have  been  a  good 


Comparisons  159 


fellow,  for  all  his  friends  and  even  the  world  at  large 
spoke  of  him— and  the  world  still  speaks  of  him— as 
"  Tom  "  Moore,  says,  of  course,  nothing  of  the  making 
of  his  own  death  mask,  nor  do  any  of  his  contempo 
raries  mention  it.  It  bears  the  strongest  resemblance 
to  all  the  painted  and  engraved  portraits  of  the  man. 
It  shows  clearly  the  wrinkled  forehead,  prominent  in 
N.  B.  Willis's  picture  of  him  in  Pencillings  by  the  Way, 
and  especially  the  "slightly  tossed  nose,"  which,  the 
great  American  interviewer  of  seventy  or  more  years 
ago  said,  "  confirmed  the  fun  of  the  expression  of  his 
face."  The  experts  in  portraiture  all  agree  that  this 
is  the  face  of  "  Tom  "  Moore.  It  came  from  a  plaster 
shop  near  what  is  called,  in  L,ondon,  "  the  top  of  the 
Brompton  Road." 

After  that  curious  first  visit,  Mr.  Kruell  was  fond  of 
comparing  the  head  of  Sheridan  with  that  of  Coleridge, 
putting  them  side  by  side  upon  my  desk,  face  to  face 
or  back  to  back,  and  walking  around  them  in  all  lights; 
pouring  forth  the  while  a  delightful  monologue  upon 
the  mental  differences  between  them  ;  and  ignorant,  I 
am  sure,  of  The  Ancient  Mariner  and  his  author,  as  he 
was  of  The  Rivals  and  their  creator,  but  hitting  the 
bull's-eye  of  their  character  at  every  shot ! 

The  Coleridge  mask  was  for  a  while  the  subject  of 
much  research  and  much  doubt.  I  found  it,  in  the 
seventies,  in  the  little  shop  of  a  dealer  in  plaster  casts 
who  lived  and  did  business  in  the  Gray's  Inn  Road, 
L,ondon.  He  was  satisfied  that  it  was  Coleridge,  but 


i6o  Galfes  in  a  Xibrar? 

he  could  tell  me  nothing  of  its  history;  and  nothing  of 
its  history  could  I  gather  in  the  authorised  biographies 
of  the  poet.  It  was  like  all  the  contemporary  engrav 
ings  of  the  man,  in  his  old  age,  to  which  I  had  access ; 
and  it  bore  every  mark  of  being  the  transcript  of  the 
face  once  described  by  Coleridge  himself  as  being,  un 
less  when  animated  by  immediate  eloquence,  expressive 
of  great  sloth  and  great,  inert,  and  almost  idiotic  good 
nature. 

"  'T  is  a  weak  carcass  of  a  face,  fat,  flabby,  and  ex 
pressive  chiefly  of  inexpression  !  "  he  said. 

Mr.  Ernest  Hartley  Coleridge,  the  grandson  of  the 
poet,  told  me  by  letter  in  1890  and  in  reply  to  my  in 
quiries  upon  the  subject,  that  he  was  writing  the 
"I/ife"  of  his  distinguished  progenitor;  that  in  his 
possession  for  that  purpose  were  all  the  family  records, 
journals,  and  correspondence ;  that  there  was  a  dim 
tradition  among  the  surviving  Coleridges  that  such  a 
death  mask  had  been  made  by  Sourzheim  but  that  he 
had  been  able  to  find  no  trace  of  it  whatever.  I  an 
swered  that  the  object  in  my  possession  was  unques 
tionably  cast  from  a  mould  from  nature  and  after  life 
had  left  the  subject,  and  that,  if  it  were  of  Coleridge, 
it  could  not  possibly  have  been  the  work  of  Sourz 
heim  whom  Coleridge  had  survived  for  some  two 
years. 

I  took  a  large  photograph  of  the  mask  in  profile  to 
the  Curator  of  the  British  National  Portrait  Gallery, 
Sir  George  Scharf,  who  was  for  years  the  acknowledged 


Coleilbge  likeness        161 


leading  portrait  expert  of  his  country.  In  an  instant 
he  said  : 

"  It  's  old  Sam  Coleridge!  Look  at  his  ears!  They 
are  out  of  place.  The  ears  of  the  Coleridges  have  for 
several  generations  been  an  inch  too  high." 

Armed  with  this  information  and  with  this  identi 
fication,  I  sent  the  photograph  to  Mr.  Krnest  Hartley 
Coleridge,  living  in  some  rural  spot  an  hour  by  rail 
from  London.  He  telegraphed  me,  evidently  in  some 
excitement,  to  meet  him  at  his  club  that  afternoon  ; 
and  when  I  entered  the  Reform  I  saw,  crossing  the 
hall,  the  very  realisation  of  the  bit  of  plaster  I  had 
known  so  well  and  so  long.  I  spoke  to  him  at  once, 
and  he  said: 

4  *  Of  course  you  recognised  me  from  the  extraordi 
nary  resemblance.  My  wife,  not  knowing  anything  of 
our  correspondence,  opened  your  package  this  morning 
and  was  absolutely  shocked  at  the  startling  likeness 
between  the  quick  and  the  dead.  Now  tell  me  all 
about  it.  What  a  wonderful  race  you  Yankees  are  ! 
Here  we  have  been  searching  all  England  in  vain  for  a 
family  treasure  which  turns  up  in  a  private  collection 
in  New  York.  Everything  we  particularly  need  and 
ought  to  have  drifts,  somehow,  to  the  omnivorous 
States.  Tell  me  where  and  how  you  got  it  !  " 

And  I  gave  him  the  address  of  the  little  dealer  in  the 
Gray's  Inn  Road,  a  shilling's  cab-fare  from  where  we 
stood  ! 

In  the  same  little  shop  in  the  Gray's  Inn  Road  were 


1  62  ZTalhe  in  a 


bought,  early  in  the  history  of  the  collection,  the  casts 
of  Sir  Richard  Owen  and  Brunei.  The  Brunels,  father 
and  son,  were  a  very  remarkable  pair  of  architectural 
engineers  who  are  frequently  mistaken  for  each  other 
from  the  similarity  of  their  Christian  names  and  from 
the  fact  that  they  were  then  at  the  height  of  their  fame, 
working  together  for  many  years  ;  the  elder,  a  very  old 
man,  dying  in  1859,  the  younger  dying  ten  years  later. 

The  mask  is  of  Brunei  Junior,  the  designer  of  the 
mammoth  steamship  Great  Eastern,  which  in  its  day, 
at  the  end  of  the  fifties,  was  looked  upon  as  one  of 
the  modern  wonders  of  the  world.  At  the  back  of  the 
cast,  now  fractured  by  careless  packers,  is  the  name 
"  Brunei  ";  but,  as  in  the  case  of  Coleridge,  the  dealer, 
who  was  also  a  moulder,  could  not  give  me  any  inform 
ation  regarding  it.  He  was  of  the  opinion,  and  no 
doubt  he  was  correct,  that  it  was  made  for  Marochetti, 
the  sculptor  of  the  statue  of  its  subject. 

Of  the  story  of  the  Owen  mask  my  Gray's  Inn  dealer 
was  equally  ignorant.  It  is  certainly  Owen,  and  it 
must  be  from  life,  for  it  came  into  my  hands  while 
Owen  was  still  living.  I  never  dared  ask  the  professor 
himself  about  it  because,  unfortunately,  I  lack  a  great 
deal  of  the  traditional  journalistic  assurance.  But  he 
was  an  intimate  of  Thackeray  and  Tennyson,  of 
Dickens,  and  of  men  of  that  stamp  ;  and  when  I  read 
that  in  1842  Carlyle  asked  for  an  introduction  to  him, 
I  am  inclined  to  ascribe  that  date  to  the  cast.  Owen 
was  then  thirty-six,  and  he  looks,  in  plaster,  like  a  man 


3obn  3Bo$le  ©'IRdlty  163 

who  had  just  been  introduced  to,  or  was  just  about  to 
be  introduced  to,  Carlyle. 

The  mask  of  the  Third  Napoleon  is  a  most  careful 
and  skilful  and  successful  piece  of  work.  It  was  made 
by  Brucciani,  a  London  moulder,  when  the  subject  did 
not  know  whether  it  hurt  him  or  not.  In  life  the 
moustache  and  imperial  were  always  waxed  and 
pointed,  and  their  position  in  the  cast,  lying  close  to 
the  cheeks  and  chin  as  they  must  of  necessity  do,  alters 
somewhat  the  appearance  of  the  familiar  face.  The 
particular  form  of  beard  affected  by  the  Emperor  was, 
by  the  way,  called  the  (<  Imperial"  in  his  honour. 

In  the  mask  of  John  Boyle  O'Reilly  the  hairs  on  the 
head  and  the  upper  lip  were  covered  with  greased  tissue- 
paper  or  thin  oiled-silk.  This  method  simplifies  the 
task  of  removing  the  matrix,  but  not  infrequently  it 
detracts  somewhat  from  the  value  of  the  cast. 

John  Boyle  O'Reilly  was  a  brilliant  Irish- American 
poet  and  journalist  who  was  banished  from  his  native 
land  for  violent  revolutionary  sentiments,  but  who, 
during  his  life  in  this  country,  was  one  of  the  most 
delightful  and  amiable  and  gentle  of  men  in  all  his 
domestic  and  social  relations. 

Mr.  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  commenting  once  upon 
the  trials  of  Job,  remarked  that  the  only  proper  place 
to  have  a  boil  was  between  ''John  "  and  "  O'Reilly." 

I  well  remember  O'Reilly's  absorbed  interest  in  this 
Third  Napoleon  mask.  He  spoke  of  its  phrenological 
strength  and  weakness ;  he  was  fond  of  comparing  it 


1 64  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar\> 

with  the  mask  of  the  First  Napoleon,  and  of  question 
ing  if  there  flowed  in  the  veins  of  the  so-called  "nephew 
of  his  uncle  "  a  drop  of  the  Bonaparte  blood. 

The  man  of  destiny  who  met  his  fate  at  Sedan  was, 
certainly,  possessed  of  not  one  of  the  facial  traits  which 
are  so  marked  in  resemblance  in  the  men  of  that  re 
markable  race.  He  was,  for  a  time,  the  head  of  his 
house.  And  he  was  the  only  Bonaparte,  for  four  gen 
erations  at  least,  who  did  not  look  like  a  Bonaparte. 

As  little  more  than  a  boy  myself  I  can  distinctly  re 
member  watching  the  Third  Napoleon  and  his  son,  the 
Prince  Imperial,  as  they  took  their  morning  walks  in 
the  private  gardens  of  the  Tuileries.  They  seemed  in 
their  solemn,  serious  way  to  be  fond  of  each  other — that 
father  and  son.  But  I  did  not  envy  them,  because  my 
own  father  told  me  that  he  and  I,  on  the  outside  of  the 
iron  fence,  were  having  the  better  and  the  safer  time 
of  it. 

What  is  claimed  to  be  the  only  and  original  mask  of 
The  Little  Corporal  is  constantly  turning  up  in  different 
parts  of  the  world.  It  is  by  no  means  an  uncommon 
object  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  I  have  seen 
and  examined  not  less  than  a  dozen  examples  of  it  in 
plaster  and  three  in  bronze.  It  was  taken,  of  course, 
at  St.  Helena  and  a  few  hours  after  the  death  of  the 
great  exile,  by  Dr.  Antomarchi,  the  Emperor's  per 
sonal  physician.  Three  or  four  bronze  casts  from  the 
mould  are  certainly  known  to  have  been  made.  One, 
the  property  of  the  French  Government,  is  in  the  Mint 


Bonapartiana  165 

at  Paris  ;  one — well  authenticated  and  signed  in  the 
casting — is  in  the  Tussaud  Museum  in  London  ;  and  a 
third  —  also  well  authenticated  and  signed  by  Anto- 
marchi — is  now  the  property  of  a  resident  of  New  York, 
an  enthusiastic  collector  of  Bonapartiana. 

Dr.  Antomarchi  is  known  to  have  been  in  New 
Orleans  in  1836  and  to  have  died  in  Cuba  in  1838,  and 
it  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  he  brought  with  him  to 
this  country  at  least  one  copy  of  the  mask.  In  this 
event  it  would  have  been  an  easy  matter  for  him  or  for 
anybody  else  to  have  reproduced  it,  and  this  would 
account  for  its  presence  in  Omaha,  in  Oswego,  in 
Albany,  in  New  Orleans,  and  in  Ontario,  Canada. 

The  plaster  copy  in  the  Princeton  Library  came  with 
me  from  Paris  in  the  early  seventies,  and  it  is,  con 
fessedly,  very  inferior  to  the  bronze  casts  in  all  respects. 
It  is  a  cast  from  a  copy,  no  doubt ;  but  it  brings  us 
nearer  to  the  wonderful  man  than  we  ever  came  before. 

The  statement  contained  in  a  number  of  newspapers 
lately  that  there  were  five  bronze  casts  from  the  original 
matrix  ;  that  one  is  in  the  British  Museum  ;  that  two 
are  in  the  Louvre,  in  Paris ;  that  one  is  in  Omaha, 
Nebraska  ;  and  that  the  fifth  is  "  the  property  of  Mr. 
Laurence  Hutton,  the  editor  of  the  Century  Magazine] ' 
I  am  compelled  to  doubt ;  because  I  have  found  no 
trace  of  such  objects  either  in  the  Louvre  or  the  British 
Museum,  and  because  I  know  that  Mr.  Laurence  Hut- 
ton  is  not  the  editor  of  the  Century  Magazine,  and  that 
he  never  owned  the  Antomarchi  mask  in  bronze. 


1 66  ftalfcs  in  a  OLibrar? 

Nothing  in  the  way  of  modern  sculpture,  it  seems 
to  me,  is  more  impressive,  more  touching,  more  pa 
thetic,  and  even  more  tragic  in  the  story  it  tells  than 
is  the  marble  figure  of  the  dying  Bonaparte,  studying 
the  map  of  Europe,  waiting  patiently  or  impatiently 
for  the  end,  and  brooding  over  what  might  have  been. 
He  asked  in  those  last  hours  that  his  ashes  might  be 
carried  to  the  banks  of  the  Seine,  to  rest  among  the 
people  he  loved  so  well.  And  in  Paris,  at  last,  they 
lie,  where  the  path  of  glory  led  them,  in  the  magni 
ficently  sombre  tomb  under  the  dome  of  the  chapel  of 
the  hospital  of  the  sacred  veterans  of  French  wars. 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Collecting  of  the  Death  Masks  (Continued)— Henry  Clay — 
Aaron  Burr — Louise  of  Prussia — Mendelssohn — Beethoven 
—  Cromwell  —  General  Grant  —  Keats  —  Wordsworth  — 
Canova — L/awrence  Barrett — General  Sherman — Cavour — 
Leopardi  —  Tasso  —  Newton  —  Queen  Elizabeth  —  Shake- 
peares— Walter  Scott. 

ANOTHER  occasional  caller  was  an  aged  gentleman 
who  came  one  day,  some  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  with 
a  letter  of  introduction  from  a  total  stranger  to  me,  stat 
ing  that  he  was  a  sculptor  who  wished  to  make  a  study 
of  my  life  mask  of  Henry  Clay.  I  gladly  enough  gave 
him  free  access  to  it.  I  learned  that  he  was  carving  a 
bust  of  the  silver-tongued  Kentuckian  for  a  Kentucky 
court-house  and  was  anxious  to  see  the  cast  of  the 
great  statesman  which,  somehow,  he  heard  that  I  had 
obtained  from  the  studio  of  Mills  in  Washington.  I 
told  him  that  I  had  bought  from  the  sons  of  the  late 
Clark  Mills  casts  of  the  heads  of  Webster  and  Calhoun 
and  of  the  face  of  Clay  ;  that  in  the  case  of  Clay  the 
eyes  were  open  ;  that  Mr.  O' Donovan,  Mr.  Saint-Gau- 
dens,  Mr.  John  Scott  Hartley,  Olin  Warner,  and  other 
statuary  friends  of  mine  were  puzzled  as  to  whether  it 
was  Clay  from  nature  or  from  a  sculptured  bust ;  that 
they  all  agreed  that  it  was  Clay,  but  that  it  had 

167 


1 68  Galfcs  in  a  library 

evidently  been  ' '  worked  up  " ;  that  although  a  certain 
self-conscious  rigidity  of  the  muscles  of  the  mouth 
showed  traces  of  the  living  and  self-conscious  face, 
they  could  not  account  for  the  opening  of  the  eyes,  and 
that  it  was  one  of  the  doubtful  masks  of  the  collection. 

The  other  masks  left  in  uncertainty  besides  Clay,  I 
explained,  were  Laurence  Sterne,  Coleridge,  Sheridan, 
Newton,  and  Aaron  Burr.  He  examined  them  all, 
and  particularly  Burr's,  with  no  little  interest ;  and  he 
said  that  he  could  not  help  me  except  in  the  case  of 
Burr.  Burr  had  baffled  me,  especially  ;  as  there  are 
not  many  existent  portraits  of  Burr  in  old  age  or  in 
youth  with  which  to  compare  it.  I  had  no  special  ad 
miration  for  Burr — who  once  killed  a  Scotsman, — but  I 
had  all  the  collector's  enthusiasm  for  Burr  in  plaster 
and  I  wanted  to  think  my  Burr  was  Burr.  How  did 
he  know  that  the  mask  was  really  Burr's  ?  That  was 
easily  explained.  He  had  made  it  himself,  going  to 
Staten  Island  the  night  after  Burr's  death  for  that  very 
purpose  !  And  thus  I  was  able  to  assure  the  University 
of  Princeton  that  Burr  has  come  back  to  his  Alma 
Mater. 

Another  mask  of  Burr,  this  time  from  life,  was  made 
by  Turnarelli,  an  Italian  sculptor  in  London,  in  1808 
or  1809.  Burr  rebelled  strongly  against  the  operation, 
and  he  wrote  to  his  daughter  Theodosia  in  a  half-angry 
and  half-humorous  sort  of  way,  that  "the  infernal 
mask  business"  had  made  a  purple  mark  on  his 
nose  which  no  rubbing  or  washing  would  remove ;  he 


IResemblance  169 


believed  the  fellow  used  quicklime  instead  of  plaster  ; 
and  he  added  that  he  had  heaped  many  curses  upon 
the  unfortunate  Dago  —  although  he  did  not  call  him  a 
1  *  Dago  !  "  I  can  sympathise  with  the  gifted  son  of  the 
Princeton  president.  I  have  been  through  the  ordeal 
myself. 

Burr  is  said  to  have  been  a  very  fascinating  creature, 
especially  to  the  ladies,  although  he  does  not  seem  to 
be  particularly  attractive  as  represented  in  the  mask. 
He  was  small  in  stature,  but  I  was  surprised  to  read 
that  he  was  taller  than  Hamilton,  whom,  strangely 
enough,  he  so  much  resembled  that  they  were  not  in 
frequently  mistaken  for  each  other  on  the  streets.  I 
have  no  cast  of  the  handsome  young  Hamilton.  If 
such  a  thing  exists  I  have  never  heard  of  it. 

A  proud  young  mother  once  exhibited  to  me  her 
new-born  and  first-born  babe,  now  a  blooming  and 
pretty  young  girl.  I  was  afraid  to  touch  it,  of  course, 
and  I  would  not  have  *  '  held  '  '  it  for  worlds  ;  but  I 
looked  at  it  in  the  customary  admiring  way,  wondering 
at  its  jelly-like  imbecility  of  form  and  feature.  Alas  ! 
when  I  was  asked  the  usual  question,  "  Whom  does  she 
favour?"  I  could  only  reply,  in  all  sincerity,  that  it 
looked  exactly  like  a  pink  photograph  of  my  death 
mask  of  Aaron  Burr.  And  the  young  mother  was  not 
altogether  pleased. 

I  cannot  to  this  day  understand  how  Clark  Mills 
managed  to  make  moulds  from  life  of  the  entire  head 
of  Webster  and  of  that  of  Calhoun,  each  so  distinct  and 


Galfcs  in  a  Xibrarp 


so  near  to  nature,  without  leaving  in  the  casts  some 
traces  of  the  hair  they  wore.  Their  faces  were  smooth 
shaven,  but  they  were  both  far  from  being  bald.  The 
occiput  must  have  been  carefully  and  closely  covered 
with  something  which  left  no  mark  ;  but  what  that 
something  was  I  cannot  determine.  Bach  cast  is 
signed  by  the  artist  and  dated  —  Calhoun's  in  1844, 
Webster's  in  1849,  —  and  that  clearly  enough  establishes 
their  identity. 

Calhoun's  cranium  is  entirely  different  in  shape,  but 
both  he  and  Webster  —  the  phrenologists  tell  us  —  had 
unusually  large  heads  ;  and  we  need  no  phrenologists 
to  tell  us  that  there  was  a  good  deal  in  them.  The 
biggest  —  in  the  physical  and  intellectual  sense  of  the 
word,  not  as  the  word  is  slangily  applied  —  the  biggest 
and  the  fullest  head  I  ever  knew  personally  was  covered 
by  the  hat  of  Mr.  John  Fiske;  and  that  hat  came  down 
to  my  shoulders,  extinguishing  me  completely  —  in  more 
ways  than  one.  But  I  have  been  told  that  the  size  of  a 
head  is  not  always  a  criterion  of  its  contents,  and  I  have 
found  some  little  comfort  in  the  fact,  as  stated  by  Leigh 
Hunt  in  Byron  and  His  Contemporaries,  that  neither 
Hunt  nor  any  of  Byron's  intellectual  contemporaries 
could  put  on  Byron's  hat  at  all. 

The  masks  of  Frederick  and  Queen  Louise,  lying  in 
state,  as  it  were,  in  the  capital  city  of  their  kingdom 
and  coming  into  my  hands  as  they  did,  must  be  ac 
cepted  without  hesitancy  as  authentic.  With  the 
King's  head  was  moulded  the  pillow  upon  which  it 


Xouise  of  Prussia 


rested,  —  a  rather  unusual  performance.  Napoleon  III., 
Thackeray,  the  Stratford  Shakespeare,  and  General 
Grant  have  been  placed  upon  placque  backgrounds, 
designed  by  the  moulders,  and  artificial  ;  which  lend 
nothing  to  their  value  as  masks.  But  in  the  case  of  the 
Great  Frederick  the  background  somehow  seems  to 
add  to  the  royal  dignity  of  his  repose  in  what  is  called 
his  "last  sleep." 

The  beautiful  Louise  of  Prussia,  the  mother  of  the 
old  Kmperor  of  Germany,  the  grandmother  of  the  man 
whom  the  Germans  loved  to  call  "Our  Fritz,"  and 
the  great-grandmother  of  the  present  Emperor,  whom 
nobody  knows  what  the  Germans  call  —  in  their  hearts, 
—  must  have  been  very  beautiful  indeed.  With  the 
exception  perhaps  of  the  mask  of  Mendelssohn,  hers  is 
the  most  peaceful  and  tranquil  in  the  collection. 

Her  life  was  not  a  happy  one,  and  to  her,  death  was 
a  comfort  and  a  relief.  She  was  glad  to  get  rid  of  the 
trouble  of  living  ;  and  this  is  shown  in  her  sweet  dead 
face.  It  will  be  observed  in  examining  the  cast  that  a 
napkin  covers  her  hair  and  that  nothing  is  presented  to 
reveal  the  frightful  scars  on  her  neck  and  the  ravages 
of  the  dreadful  disease  she  inherited  and  which  she 
handed  down  to  her  descendants,  —  scars  which  the 
court  painters  succeeded  so  artistically  in  helping  her 
in  life  to  conceal  from  the  world. 

Mendelssohn's  death  was  eminently  peaceful.  Lam- 
padius,  his  biographer,  in  describing  the  final  scene, 
wrote  :  *  '  His  features  soon  assumed  a  glorified  expres- 


1 72  £alh0  in  a  Xibrar? 

sion.  So  much  he  looked  like  one  in  sleep  that  some 
of  his  friends  thought  that  it  could  not  be  death,  an 
illusion  which  is  often  given  to  the  eye  of  love.  His 
friends  Bendemann  and  Huebner,"  it  is  added,  "took 
a  cast  of  his  features,  as  he  lay." 

This  is  one  of  the  few  cases  in  which  there  is  any 
contemporary  allusion  to  the  making  of  a  death  mask. 
If  other  biographers  had  been  equally  thoughtful  of  my 
feelings,  I  would  have  been  spared  much  trouble  and 
uncertainty  and  would  have  escaped  the  perusal  of  not 
a  little  melancholy  literature. 

The  story  of  the  Schiller  cast  is  also  told  in  at 
least  one  of  the  Lives  of  the  poet.  It  was  made  by 
Klauer,  and  it  was  used  to  identify  the  skull  of  Schiller 
which  had  been  lost  for  some  years  and  had  a  curious 
and  wandering  existence,  resting — uneasily  enough — 
in  two  or  three  different  cemeteries  until  it  joined  the 
bones  of  Goethe  in  the  family  vault  of  the  Grand  Duke 
of  Saxe- Weimar,  where  it  still  remains. 

There  are  two  masks  of  Beethoven  over  which  I  was 
much  perplexed.  One  came  from  Berlin  and  was  of 
ficial  ;  the  other  was  discovered  in  Stockholm — in  a 
back  street  and  in  a  cellar — and  it  had  no  history  behind 
it.  They  are  both  clearly  from  nature,  they  are  both 
unquestionably  Beethoven,  and  they  are  not  entirely 
alike. 

I  discovered  after  a  long  search  that  one  mask  was 
made  by  Klein  from  life  in  1812  when  Beethoven  was 
in  his  forty -second  year.  This  the  experts  consider  the 


Cromwell  flDatrii         173 


better  of  the  two.  Klein's  bust  of  Beethoven,  taken 
from  it,  is  a  familiar  object  in  the  music-halls  and 
music-shops  and  in  the  homes  of  music-lovers  the 
world  over. 

The  second  mask  was  made  from  death  in  1827  by 
Dannhauer.  The  eyes,  to  protect  the  lashes,  were 
covered  with  small  squares  of  cloth.  In  comparing  the 
two,  one  is  struck  by  the  absence  of  consciousness  in 
the  cast  from  death,  and  by  the  decidedly  conscious 
look  in  the  other,  as  if  the  original  knew  he  was  sitting 
for  his  picture  and  was  trying  very  hard  *  *  to  look 
pleasant.  '  ' 

Among  the  many  casts  in  the  museum  of  the  British 
Phrenological  Society  in  L,ondon  very  few  are  of  indi 
viduals  of  any  intellectual  note.  Beethoven  and  Sheri 
dan  are  there  almost  alone,  among  a  gruesome  gang  of 
famous  criminals  and  hydrocephalic  monstrosities. 

In  the  case  of  Cromwell,  as  in  the  case  of  Beethoven, 
I  found  two  masks  —  unquestionably  of  the  great  Pro 
tector  —  but  not  from  the  same  matrix.  One  is  in  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  in  London  ;  one  is  in  the 
British  Museum.  One  is  in  plaster;  one  is  in  wax. 
Carlyle  accepted  the  plaster  cast  as  genuine,  and  he 
owned  a  copy  of  it  which,  through  Mr.  Charles  Eliot 
Norton,  went  eventually  to  Harvard  College.  It  is 
one  of  the  few  things  of  its  peculiar  kind  which  that 
seat  of  learning  possesses.  My  replica  of  it,  once  the 
property  of  George  Combe,  is  now  among  many  others 
of  its  genus  in  Princeton.  It  is  not  at  all  an  un- 


Galfcs  in  a 


common  object  as  such  objects  go,  but  it  is  to  me  of 
enormous  interest. 

Of  the  museum's  mask  in  wax,  I  have  never  seen  a 
copy  or  a  replica.  Each  of  the  learned  institutions  of 
Victoria's  capital  believed  in  the  verity  of  its  own  ex 
ample,  and  each  of  course  questioned  the  authenticity 
of  the  other  until  I  solved  the  problem  to  their  mutual 
satisfaction.  There  is  plenty  of  contemporary  authority 
for  "  the  plaster  cast  of  Oliver's  face,  taken  after  his 
death";  but  I  could  learn  nothing  of  the  wax  cast 
until  I  read,  in  a  work  called  The  House  of  Cromwell^ 
written  by  the  Rev.  Mark  Noble,  that  "  the  baronial 
family  of  Russell  are  in  possession  of  a  wax-mask  of 
Oliver  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  taken  off  while 
he  was  living." 

This  same  Mark  Noble  tells  us  that  the  representa 
tive  of  Ferdinand  II.  of  Tuscany  bribed  an  attendant 
of  Cromwell  to  permit  him  to  take  in  secret  a  mask  of 
the  Protector,  in  plaster  of  Paris,  which  was  done  only 
a  few  moments  after  his  Highness's  dissolution.  A 
cast  from  this  mould,"  it  is  added,  "  is  now  (1737)  in 
the  Florentine  Gallery.  It  is  either  of  bronze  with  a 
brassy  hue  or  stained  to  give  it  that  appearance."  I 
could  find  no  record  of  it  in  the  Florentine  Gallery,  a 
century  and  a  half  later. 

The  body  of  Cromwell  is  supposed  to  have  been 
buried  in  the  Chapel  of  Henry  VII.  in  Westminster 
Abbey.  But  after  the  Restoration,  with  the  bodies  of 
Ireland  his  son-in-law  and  Bradshaw  the  Regicide,  it  — 


(Brant  flDasfea        175 


or  what  is  supposed  to  be  it  —  was  carried  to  Tyburn, 
the  place  of  public  execution,  and  there  hanged  in  the 
public  sight  ;  a  ceremony  which  may  have  given  some 
satisfaction  to  Royalists  but  which  Cromwell  probably 
did  not  mind  in  the  least.  His  favourite  daughter, 
Elizabeth  Claypole,  was  for  some  unexplained  reason 
permitted  to  remain  among  the  kings  and  queens  and 
the  knaves  and  the  two-spots  in  the  Abbey—  and  prob 
ably  she  does  not  mind  it  either. 

Two  moulds  from  the  face  of  General  Grant,  another 
warrior,  maker  of  history,  and  leader  of  men,  were  made 
almost  immediately  after  his  death  at  Mount  McGregor: 
one  without  the  knowledge  or  consent  of  his  family, 
nobody  knows  by  whose  connivance  ;  the  other,  at  the 
request  of  his  family,  by  Mr.  Karl  Gerhardt.  Both  of 
these,  or  copies  of  them,  came  eventually  into  my  col 
lection.  The  first  is  very  distressing,  and  at  the  request 
of  the  present  General  Grant  I  have  never  exhibited  it 
or  permitted  it  to  be  reproduced  in  any  way.  The 
second  was  bequeathed  to  me  by  Mr.  Arthur  Dodge, 
although  I  have  never  learned  how  or  from  whom  he 
obtained  it.  It  has  been  put  into  an  allegorical  national 
frame  but  nothing  has  been  added  to  its  value  or  its 
interest  thereby. 

Mrs.  Grant  was  loath  to  have  the  mask  in  her  pos 
session,  which  she  believed  to  be  the  only  impression 
in  existence,  go  out  of  her  hands  ;  and  it  was  not  until 
after  long  correspondence  with  her  and  her  sons  that  I 
finally  received  consent  to  have  a  replica  of  it  made.  I 


1 76  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrarp 

went  to  her  house  for  that  purpose  and  by  appointment 
with  Mr.  Decomps,  one  day;  all  the  preparations  were 
made  ;  the  cast  was  before  us  ;  when  the  widow  recon 
sidered  her  permission  and  reverently  and  abruptly  and 
in  silence  carried  it  away.  Mr.  Decomps  in  the  mean 
time,  however,  had  recognised  the  fact  that  it  was  a 
cast  of  the  cast  which  he  had  made  from  the  original 
mould,  and  that  it  had  already  been  cast  by  some  one 
else.  I  have  no  idea  what  became  of  its  fellows,  unless 
Mr.  Dodge's  copy — identical  with  it  except  in  the  mat 
ter  of  the  inartistic  frame — is  one  of  them. 

The  * '  trying-to-look-pleasant ' '  expression  is  pecul 
iarly  noticeable  in  the  life  masks  of  Wordsworth  and 
of  Keats  ;  although  the  former  did  not  altogether  suc 
ceed,  which  was  not  the  fault,  by  the  way,  of  Charles 
L,amb.  Haydon  describes  the  operation  in  his  Journal, 
under  date  of  1815,  and  says  :  "  Wordsworth  sat  in  my 
dressing-gown  with  his  hands  folded,  sedate,  solemn, 
and  still,  bearing  it  like  a  philosopher."  But  else 
where  we  read  that  the  poet  was  placed  flat  on  his  back 
on  the  studio  floor,  while  Lamb  capered  about  him  in 
glee  at  the  undignified  absurdity  of  the  proceedings, 
trying  to  make  the  subject  grin  at  his  fantastic  criti 
cisms  and  remarks. 

Sir  Henry  Taylor  in  his  Autobiography  spoke  of  at 
tending  Wordsworth's  funeral  and  of  being  shown 
then  ' '  a  cast  of  a  mask  of  his  face  in  which  was  a  cer 
tain  rough  grandeur,"  but  he  does  not  say  when  it 
was  taken  ;  nowhere  did  I  find  any  reference  to  a  death 


TKllorh  of  Ifoa^bon         177 


mask,  and  what  Sir  Henry  saw  and  examined  in  1850 
was  no  doubt  the  work  of  Haydon,  done  thirty-five 
years  before.  It  is  more  like  the  portraits  of  Words 
worth  in  his  ripe  middle-age  than  in  his  declining 
years. 

Mr.  John  Gilmer  Speed,  the  nephew  of  Keats,  says 
that  the  frequently  engraved  life  mask  of  his  uncle  was 
made  by  Haydon  in  1818.  Joseph  Severn,  the  friend 
of  Keats,  pronounced  it  "  the  most  interesting  as  it  is 
the  most  real  portrait  of  the  man  in  existence  '  '  ;  and  he 
added  that  it  had,  or  so  it  seemed  to  him,  "a  suggestion 
of  humorous  patience  in  the  expression  of  the  mouth." 
It  requires,  as  I  know  by  actual  experience,  a  good 
deal  of  patience,  humorous  and  otherwise,  to  sit  for  a 
"portrait  in  plaster." 

The  original  of  this  cast,  much  more  perfect  than  this 
and  than  any  other  I  have  seen,  was  given  by  Keats 
himself  to  John  Hamilton  Reynolds  when  Keats  left 
England  to  die  in  Rome.  It  was  bequeathed  by  Reyn 
olds  to  his  sister  Charlotte,  by  whom,  with  a  clear  pedi 
gree,  it  was  donated  to  the  Trustees  of  the  British 
National  Portrait  Gallery,  where  it  is  carefully  pre 
served.  Both  Charles  Armitage  Brown  and  John 
Taylor  speak  of  '  '  casts  of  the  face,  hand,  and  foot  of 
Keats,"  taken  after  death  ;  but  that  such  things  were 
really  made,  and  that  they  still  exist,  I  have  never  been 
able  to  learn. 

Hay  don's  own  mask,  taken  after  death,  is  reproduced 
in  the  Memoir  by  his  son.  My  copy,  purchased  in 


178  ftalfcs  in  a  %ibrar$ 

London  after  a  long  search,  was  carefully  packed  for 
shipment  and  was  cruelly  broken  on  its  arrival  in  New 
York  by  criminally  careless  custom-house  officials,  who 
opened  the  case  to  see  that  its  contents  were  not  contra 
band  and  then  threw  the  contents  hurriedly  back, charg 
ing  me  a  heavy  duty  upon  the  damage  they  had  done. 

The  custom-house  expenses,  brokerage  fees,  duties, 
and  the  like,  upon  all  the  foreign  masks  which  I  did 
not  bring  back  with  me  to  this  country  in  my  own 
hands  and  among  my  personal  luggage,  averaged  more 
than  one  hundred  percentum  on  the  original  cost.  As 
I  have  said  in  my  book,  the  heads  of  my  paternal  gov 
ernment  have  taxed  me  in  this  matter  in  order  to  "pro 
tect"  the  ghosts  of  bygone  plasterers  who  could  not 
have  made  the  casts  if  they  had  wanted  to,  and  who 
could  have  found  but  a  poor  market  for  them  even  if 
they  had  been  able  to  make  them. 

Another  valuable  mask  damaged  slightly  in  the  same 
lawfully-lawless  way  is  that  of  Bentham,  the  eccentric 
jurist  and  philosopher.  George  Combe  writes  of  this 
mask  in  the  Phrenological  Journal  published  shortly 
after  Bentham' s  death  in  1832.  Although  it  does  not 
figure  in  Combe's  book,  he  evidently  had  a  copy  of  it 
which  he  highly  prized ;  but  he  does  not  say  whether 
it  is  a  death  mask  or  the  life  mask  known  to  have  been 
made  by  the  Italian  Turnarelli  some  forty-five  years 
before  Bentham  died.  Bentham  it  was,  by  the  by,  who 
induced  Aaron  Burr  to  submit  to  the  operation  at  the 
hands  of  the  same  artist. 


a  posthumous  fate          179 

I  have  told  the  gruesome  and  extraordinary  story  of 
Bentham's  posthumous  fate  in  another  place.  It  is  too 
long  to  find  room  here.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  he  be 
queathed  his  skeleton  to  University  College,  London, 
with  the  request  that  it  should  be  covered  with  his 
own  clothes  and  put,  comfortably  seated,  in  the  chair 
he  used  to  occupy.  And  there,  in  a  commodious  glass 
case,  it  sits  serenely  to  this  day,  surmounted  by  a  wax 
head  which  this  mask  closely  resembles.  Bentham  be 
gan  the  study  of  Latin  in  his  fourth  year  and  he  was 
familiar  with  the  Greek  alphabet  before  he  was  pro 
moted  to  trousers.  Naturally  he  had  few  ' 'conditions ' ' 
when  he  entered  Queen's  College,  Oxford,  at  the  age 
of  twelve.  For  all  that  he  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
on  any  of  the  existing  elevens,  and  there  is  no  record 
of  his  ever  having  made  a  touch-down  ! 

The  mask  of  Canova  I  fractured  myself,  but  happily 
not  to  its  serious  detriment.  I  accidentally  broke  its 
neck  while  hammering  a  nail  on  which  to  hang  the 
Reverend  Thomas  Chalmers,  one  of  my  father's  per 
sonal  heroes  and  the  "  light  of  the  Scottish  pulpit." 

Concerning  the  Canova  mask  might  be  repeated  the 
saying  of  Mr.  John  Fiske's  journeyman-carpenter  who, 
when  he  saw  a  bust  of  Voltaire  in  the  Cambridge 
Library,  asked:  "  Kinder  sickly  like,  warn't  he?" 
Canova  certainly  looks  "kinder  sickly  like"  here. 
The  cast  came  from  Venice,  and  it  was  the  work  of 
some  of  the  sculptor's  devoted  pupils,  who  used  it  as  a 
model  for  the  medallion  bust  on  the  monument  in  that 


i8o  Galfcs  in  a  library 

city,  although  they  glorified  and  rejuvenated  the 
subject. 

I  found  Dr.  Chalmers  in  George  Street,  Edinburgh, 
one  day ;  the  only  mask  or  the  only  thing  like  a  mask 
which  a  certain  delightful  little  curiosity -shop  con 
tained.  And  how  the  dealer  came  by  it  he  could  never 
explain.  He  knew  all  about  his  old  clocks  and  his 
ancient  warming-pans  and  his  Mary  Stuart  medals  and 
his  antique  dirks  and  helmets  and  his  bawbee  pieces 
and  his  "  Kilmarnock  Burns,"  but  he  could  never  tell 
me  "naething  about  Tom  Chawlmers,"  or  where  it 
came  from.  It  cost  me  half  a  crown,  and  I  have  never 
regretted  its  purchase,  for  that  it  is  Chalmers  nobody 
who  ever  saw  his  face  or  a  limning  of  it  can  doubt. 

For  the  mask  of  Lawrence  Barrett,  made  for  me,  I 
paid  the  moulder  fifty  dollars,  the  regularly  established 
price  for  such  things.  For  the  casts  of  Cavour  and 
Pope  Pius  IX.  I  paid  to  a  dealer  in  Rome,  Italy,  two 
lire,  or  forty  cents,  each.  These  are  the  most  expen 
sive  and  the  least  expensive  of  the  lot. 

By  a  curious  coincidence,  the  last  letter  which  Barrett 
ever  wrote  was  written  at  my  request  and  in  my  pre 
sence  to  Father  Sherman,  asking  his  permission  to  add 
General  Sherman's  head  to  my  collection.  This  was 
on  a  Tuesday  afternoon.  The  gentle  young  priest 
brought  the  answer  in  person,  three  days  later,  and  he 
gave  it  to  me  in  a  room  in  which  Barrett  lay  dead. 

This  Barrett  mask,  as  I  have  said  before,  gave  his 
fellow  tragedian  a  great  shock  once  ;  and,  later,  it  gave 


a  personal  Goucb  181 

a  great  shock  to  me.  The  copy  for  The  Players  came 
one  evening  when  Booth  was  on  the  stage,  in  Brooklyn, 
It  was  uncovered  by  a  thoughtless  servant  and  placed 
on  a  small  table  near  Booth's  bed  ;  and  there  in  all  its 
ghastly  whiteness  of  fresh  plaster  —  almost  the  man 
himself — Booth,  not  knowing  of  its  existence,  found  it 
when  he  turned  on  the  electric  lamps  at  midnight. 

When  the  masks  were  photographed  for  Harper 's 
Magazine,  the  work  was  done  for  safety's  sake  in  my 
own  house.  The  conditions  were  poor  and  the  only 
proper  light  was  that  of  an  upper  guest-chamber.  I 
would  not  trust  the  precious  objects  to  careless  hands, 
and  I  carried  them  to  the  operator,  one  by  one,  and 
placed  them  on  the  vacant  bed  ;  Barrett's  head  resting 
by  a  strange  chance  upon  the  very  pillow  on  which  I 
so  often  had  seen  it  in  all  the  flush  of  robust  health  and 
cheerful  spirits. 

I  had  lived  so  long  in  intimate  intercourse  with  these 
things,  crowding  as  they  did  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 
the  little  room  in  which  so  many  of  my  working  hours 
were  spent,  that  I  had  learned  to  look  upon  them  with 
something  like  a  hardened  insensibility  as  to  their 
actual  significance.  But  I  realised  everything  that 
each  one  of  them  had  meant — to  somebody — when  I 
saw  my  dear  old  friend  Barrett  as  I  saw  him  on  that 
gruesome  day.  It  is  all  very  well  to  discuss  the  dead 
faces  of  Dante  or  Tasso  or  of  Swift  or  of  Thomas  Paine 
or  of  the  men  of  other  times,  but  when  it  comes  to  the 
contemplation  and  examination  of  the  dead  faces  of  the 


1 82  Galfcs  in  a  library 

men  you  have  known  and  loved  in  the  flesh  it  is  a  very 
different  matter.  John  McCullough,  Barrett,  Harry 
Edwards,  Walt  Whitman,  John  Boyle  O'Reilly,  Dion 
Boucicault,  General  Sherman, — to  all  of  whom  I  have 
shown  these  masks, — have,  now,  death  masks  of  their 
own  in  the  collection. 

I  have  spent  many  an  interesting  day  with  Barrett  at 
Stratford- on- A  von.  He  was  a  scholar  and  a  ripe  and 
good  one ;  and  naturally  everything — no  matter  how 
vague  and  misty  it  might  be — which  pertained  to  the 
personality  of  Shakespeare  appealed  to  him.  His 
favourite  walk  was  to  Ann  Hathaway 's  cottage  at  Shot- 
tery,  where  Shakespeare's  courting  was  done.  We 
soon  became  known  to  the  simple  old  Warwickshire 
woman  who  was  its  occupant  and  care-taker;  and  Bar 
rett  loved  dearly  to  sit  in  its  great  chimney-corner  or 
to  ramble  among  its  little  garden  paths  to  pick  the 
descendants  of  the  common  English  domestic  flowers 
of  which  Shakespeare  wrote,  and  to  quote  to  the  ghost 
of  Mistress  Hathaway  by  the  hour  the  words  of  affec 
tion  which  Shakespeare  put  into  the  mouths  of  the 
lovers  of  his  creating. 

The  mask  of  General  Sherman,  which  came  to  me 
with  the  consent  of  his  family  and  through  Barrett's 
kindness,  is,  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  the  first  and  the  only 
cast  from  the  matrix,  and  is  one  of  the  finest  in  the 
collection. 

The  last  time  I  saw  General  Sherman  alive  he  dis 
tinguished  me  by  calling  me  a  ' '  scally-wag  "  in  the 


a  Germ  of  affection  183 

presence  of  three  or  four  hundred  men.  It  was  at  a 
public  dinner,  and  it  was  his  own  last  public  appear 
ance.  After  he  had  made  his  happy  little  speech  he 
left  the  table,  every  man  in  the  great  room  at  Del- 
monico's  rising  to  cheer  him  and  crowding  around  him 
to  take  him  by  the  hand.  Both  arms  were  nearly 
wrung  off  when  he  came  to  me,  and  he  flatly  refused  to 
touch  my  digits.  Pushing  me  back  into  my  chair  he 
cried:  "  What !  shake  hands  with  you,  you  darned 
scally-wag !  I  've  shaken  hands  with  you  often 
enough  ! ' ' 

I  do  not  know,  exactly,  what  a  "scally-wag  "  is,  but 
the  dear  old  General  seemed  to  look  upon  it  as  a  term 
of  affection  ;  and  I  would  rather  have  been  called  a 
"scally-wag"  by  Sherman  than  have  shaken  hands 
with  the  Emperor  of  all  the  Russias  and  his  court. 

Madame  Malibran  was  killed  by  a  fall  from  her 
horse,  and  it  is  said  that  her  face  was  disfigured  by  the 
accident,  although  it  does  not  so  appear  in  the  mask. 
Her  friend  and  biographer,  the  Countess  de  Merlin, 
stated  that  out  of  respect  for  Malibran 's  wishes  no 
posthumous  cast  or  sketch  of  any  kind  was  made  of 
her.  But  members  of  her  family,  still  living,  assure  me 
that  De  Beriot,  her  husband,  did  take  this  cast  which 
helped  him  to  execute  that  bust  of  Malibran  now  in 
the  house  of  her  son  in  Paris.  This  was  a  very  un 
usual  performance,  as  De  Beriot  was  not  a  sculptor,  and 
he  never  made  anything  of  the  kind  before  or  after. 
The  bust  is  said  to  be  neither  agreeable  nor  a  good 


1 84  Galfce  in  a  Xibran? 

likeness ;  but  the  mask  has  been  recognised  by  her 
friends  as  unquestionably  hers,  and  the  Curator  of  the 
British  National  Portrait  Gallery,  who  knew  her  per 
sonally,  asserted  that  he  could  see  in  it  plainly,  what 
he  had  been  able  merely  to  trace  vaguely  in  real  life, 
the  African  type  of  features  which  she  had  inherited 
from  her  father,  Garcia,  who  was  of  Spanish-Moorish 
descent. 

As  the  open  public  cab  in  which  we  were  driving  to 
dine  with  friends  in  Rome,  Italy,  one  night  some  years 
ago,  turned  into  a  little  street  quite  unfamiliar  to  me,  I 
exclaimed  suddenly  : 

"  There 'sCavour!" 

"Where  's  Cavour?"  asked  Mrs.  Hutton,  greatly 
interested  in  the  man  and  forgetting  for  the  moment 
that  he  was  dead. 

But  her  husband  was  not  by  her  side.  I  had  leaped 
from  the  moving  vehicle  and  was  bargaining  with  a 
dealer  in  casts  for  the  masks  of  Cavour  and  Pius  IX. 
which  I  had  seen  in  a  plaster-shop  window.  I  brought 
my  purchases  back,  put  them,  naked,  on  the  front  seat 
— there  was  no  time  to  have  them  wrapped  up, — and  I 
took  them  out  to  dinner  with  me. 

Why  did  I  not  wait  until  next  day  ?  Because  next 
day  the  shop  might  be  burned  or  the  dealer  might  have 
moved  away.  Anything  might  have  happened.  When 
the  true  sportsman  sees  a  trout  jump  within  casting 
distance  of  him,  he  does  not  ''wait  until  the  next 
day!" 


©tber  flDaefee  185 

Although  Cavour  was  born  and  buried  in  Turin  he 
was,  naturally,  a  very  familiar  figure  in  the  city  of 
Rome  ;  and  I  have  often  wondered  if  he  ever  passed 
from  the  Piazza,  del  Popolo  into  the  little  side-street  by 
the  convent  where  Luther  lived,  to  look  into  the  win 
dow  of  the  little  shop  where  not  very  long  after  his 
death  I  found  the  cast  of  his  own  dead  face. 

The  mask  of  Pius  is  an  unusually  fine  one.  If  it  is 
not  the  first  impression  from  the  original  matrix,  it  is 
assuredly  a  very  early  cast.  The  body  lay  in  state  in 
one  of  the  chapels  of  St.  Peter's  for  some  days,  and  an 
eye-witness  of  the  ceremonies  said  that  the  face,  per 
fectly  visible,  had  changed  very  little  and  that  a  slight 
flush  even  was  on  the  cheeks.  This  "  slight  flush" 
leads  me  to  question  if  it  was  not  a  wax  mask  of  the 
face  which  was  visible,  as  a  mask  of  that  kind  was 
unquestionably  made.  Such  things,  in  such  exalted 
and  public  cases,  are  often  done.  But  Princeton  pos 
sesses  a  replica  of  the  mask,  without  the  flush,  and 
very  near  to  nature  indeed. 

The  mask  of  Leopardi  came  to  me  in  Rome  and  in 
the  same  year,  directly  from  the  family  of  the  unhappy 
poet.  His  deformities  of  body  which  so  much  dis 
tressed  him  not  only  physically  but  mentally  are  of 
course  not  apparent  in  his  face.  His  mind,  like  that 
of  Alexander  Pope  (who  was  similarly  disproportioned 
in  person),  was  more  active  and  more  beautiful  than 
was  his  frame  ;  but  it  is  said  that  he  inspired  very  little 
tenderness  and  affection  even  in  the  heart  of  his  own 


1 86  Galfce  in  a  library 

mother.  He  looks,  in  cold  dull  plaster,  like  one  who 
lacked  a  mother's  love  and  who  missed  it.  "  The  man 
who  never  shook  his  mother" — to  quote  Mr.  Mark 
Twain — is  only  doing,  in  his  negative  way,  what  all 
men  do ;  but  sad  is  the  lot  of  the  man  whom  his  mother 
shakes. 

From  this  mask  was  evolved  the  engraving  of  Leo- 
pardi  on  his  death-bed,  which  forms  the  frontispiece  to 
a  volume  of  his  collected  works,  and  is  considered  the 
best  of  the  very  few  portraits  of  him  which  exist.  If 
there  was  any  happy  period  of  Leopardi's  life  it  must 
have  been  his  childhood,  spent  in  Naples,  the  beautiful 
and  happy  place  of  his  birth.  Let  us  hope  that  for  a 
few  years,  at  least,  he  was  too  young  and  too  unob 
servant  to  realise  the  disproportion  of  his  own  poor 
little  body  or  to  notice  the  lack  of  a  mother's  love. 

The  mask  of  Tasso  came  from  Rome  many  years 
earlier.  The  original,  no  longer  publicly  exhibited,  is 
reverently  preserved  with  his  bust,  his  crucifix,  his 
inkstand,  and  other  personal  relics  of  Tasso,  in  the 
room  of  the  Convent  of  San  Onofrio  in  Rome,  where  he 
spent  the  last  months  of  his  life  and  where  he  died  and 
is  buried.  Ladies  were  never  admitted  into  this  cham 
ber  except  upon  one  day  of  the  year,  the  anniversary 
of  the  poet's  death  ;  and,  since  an  earthquake  shook  its 
walls  and  made  them  unsafe,  not  even  men  are  per 
mitted  to  enter  at  any  time. 

The  card  with  Harper's  Magazine  engraven  upon  its 
front  procured  for  me  my  interview  with  Sir  Isaac  New- 


Comparison  187 


ton.  Portraits  of  Newton  without  the  flowing  wig  of 
his  period  are  rare,  and  no  portrait  of  Newton  that  I  had 
seen  suggested  the  mask  which  I  had  been  assured  was 
his,  not  even  the  bust  by  Roubiliac  modelled  from  it. 
That  Roubiliac  had  made  such  a  mask,  and  that  it  had 
found  its  way  in  the  early  part  of  the  century  into  the 
hands  of  the  Royal  Society  from  the  hands  of  Samuel 
Hunter  Christie,  who  had  purchased  it  at  a  sale  of  Rou 
biliac'  s  effects,  I  knew  to  be  a  matter  of  record  ;  and  I 
was  naturally  anxious  to  compare  mine  with  the 
original.  The  Society's  rooms  in  Burlington  House, 
London,  are  not  open  to  the  public  and  access  is  rarely 
granted  to  them  except  for  cause.  After  a  good  deal 
of  knocking  and  waiting  at  their  doors,  my  card  was  at 
last  taken  to  a  scientific-looking  gentleman  whose  exact 
position  there  I  could  not  determine.  He  allowed  me 
to  enter  as  far  as  an  ante-chamber,  where  he  informed 
me  firmly,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  I  represented 
the  great  periodical,  that  I  could  proceed  no  farther 
without  an  order  signed  and  sealed  by  some  great 
somebody,  —  I  've  forgotten  whom.  And  he  added 
that  the  great  functionary  could  not  sign  or  seal  the 
order  at  present  because  he  was  dead  and  his  successor 
had  not  been  appointed. 

I  was  permitted,  however,  to  state  the  object  of  my 
visit  and  to  emphasize  what  I  considered  to  be  its  im 
portance,  not  only  to  me,  but  to  the  magazine-reading 
public  of  two  continents.  My  interlocutor,  still  seem 
ing  to  regard  me  as  a  peculiarly  brazen  specimen  of 


1 88  £alfce  in  a  Xibrar? 

American  sneak-thief  whose  object  was  to  steal  or  to 
mutilate  the  relic  of  the  great  man,  told  me  that  com 
parison  was  not  only  impossible  but  useless,  because  I 
could  in  no  way  be  possessed  of  a  copy  of  an  object 
that  had  never  been  copied  but  once  and  then  for  New 
ton's  College,  Trinity,  at  Cambridge,  and  that  my 
specimen  must,  of  necessity,  be  fraudulent  and  of  no 
value.  He  was  not  a  little  startled  when  he  examined 
a  photograph  of  it,  and — even  without  the  order  sealed 
and  signed — he  permitted  me  to  make  the  comparison 
I  so  much  desired.  The  casts  were  identical,  except 
that  the  other  was  the  impression  from  the  origi 
nal  mould  and  naturally  better  and  clearer  than 
mine. 

This  was  a  most  extraordinary  thing!  Most  aston 
ishing!  And  mine  was  really  in  a  private  collection 
in  the  States?  Most  astonishing!  Most  extraordin 
ary! 

A  committee  happened  to  be  sitting  that  day  in  an 
adjoining  room.  Would  I  be  so  good  as  to  go  before 
the  committee  and  show  them  this  most  astonishing 
thing  ?  I  was  so  good  !  And  the  committee-men  in 
their  turn  were  astounded.  But  I  would  not  tell  them 
where  I  got  the  mask.  The  modeller  employed  to 
make  the  copy  for  Cambridge  had  made  two  copies,  and 
of  these  his  descendants  had  sold  me  one  for  five  shil 
lings  sterling  in  cash — and  a  quart  of  beer. 

Sir  Isaac  was  buried  in  the  nave  of  Westminster 
Abbey  beneath  a  mural  monument  containing  a  be- 


IRelative  IDalues  189 

wigged  bust  which  looks  not  in  the  least  like  the  mask. 
In  all  the  crowd  in  what  Macaulay  calls  "  that  great 
temple  of  silence  and  reconciliation  "  is  no  man  who 
ornaments  it  more  than  does  Newton. 

As  a  matrix  is  composed  of  perishable  material  the 
first  cast  is,  of  course,  the  most  perfect  in  all  respects  ; 
the  second  is  not  quite  so  good  ;  and  the  others — when 
others  are  made — are  apt  to  be  a  little  more  than  out 
lines,  although  each  has  its  value  as  a  portrait,  if  only 
by  suggestion.  Even  the  cast  from  a  cast,  as  is  the 
case  of  the  mask  of  Newton,  is  better  and  in  some  re 
spects  more  true  to  nature  than  is  any  other  form  of 
portraiture,  although  it  is  not  so  correct  as  is  the 
original  in  London  ;  and  the  original  by  the  way  was 
not  improved  in  the  process  of  being  put  into  a  mould. 
Of  the  popular  and  more  common  examples,  as  Dante 
for  instance,  casts  of  casts  from  copies  of  copies  have 
been  made  until  very  little  is  left  of  the  famous  mys 
terious  head  of  the  Italian  poet  in  the  Uffizi  Gallery  of 
Florence. 

For  the  illustrations  to  my  book  I  was  fortunate 
enough  to  obtain  a  photograph  of  the  prototype  itself. 
But,  as  a  rule,  the  Dantes  you  have  seen,  while  they 
came  from  Florence,  are  cousins  of  Dante  and  no  man 
knows  how  many  times  removed  in  plastic  relationship. 
At  the  side  of  the  Cathedral  Square  in  Florence  is  still 
preserved,  embedded  in  the  wall  of  a  comparatively 
modern  house,  a  bit  of  stone  which  is  highly  regard 
ed  by  those  tourists  who  accept  the  guide-books  as 


190  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

invariable  tellers  of  the  truth.  This  "  Stone  of  Dante  " 
is  said  to  have  been  a  favourite  seat  of  the  poet  while  he 
watched  the  building  of  the  Duomo  ;  although  why  he 
always  occupied  the  same  hard  and  uninviting  resting 
place  and  how  he  could  have  inspected  the  erection  of 
a  building  which  at  the  time  of  his  death  had  passed 
nothing  but  its  lower  foundation-walls  ;  the  guide 
books  do  not  explain. 

With  the  exception  of  the  cast  of  Shakespeare,  the 
only  cast  in  the  collection  which  is  not  from  nature  is 
that  of  Elizabeth  of  England  ;  and  these  two  are  pre 
served  only  because  they  are  both  supposed  and  be 
lieved  to  have  been  based  upon  masks  from  death. 
The  face  of  Elizabeth  is  taken  from  the  recumbent 
figure  of  the  Virgin  Queen  in  Henry  VII. 's  Chapel  in 
the  Abbey  of  Westminster ;  and  one  John  de  Critz, 
"  famous  for  his  painting,"  is  said  to  have  carved  this 
effigy  from  the  mask  in  wax  which  is  known  to  have 
covered  her  dead  face  as  she  lay  in  state.  This  his 
torical  waxen  object  was  long  preserved  in  another  part 
of  the  minster  with  other  similar  royal  and  aristocratic 
relics.  But  I  have  not  been  able  to  see  it  for  many 
years  and  it  has  probably  gone  now  the  way  of  wax  in 
general. 

The  cast  of  the  bust  of  Shakespeare,  I  was  assured 
at  the  time  of  its  purchase  in  Stratford  many  years  ago, 
was  made  direct  from  the  original  in  the  church  by  a 
journeyman-plasterer,  who  did  it  in  the  silence  of  mid 
night  and,  of  course,  by  stealth.  Mr.  Marshall,  the 


Gbe  flDasfc  of  Sbafcespeare 


antiquary  from  whom  I  bought  it  and  long  since  lying 
in  the  Stratford  churchyard,  had  what  he  declared  to 
be  its  pedigree,  —  always  promised  me  but  never,  alas, 
forthcoming.  This  Stratford  bust  is  supposed  to  have 
been  carved  by  Gerard  Johnson  shortly  after  the  funeral 
and  to  have  been  copied  from  a  death  mask  ;  but  this, 
like  everything  else  in  the  story  of  the  personality  of 
Shakespeare,  is  mere  tradition.  It  was  certainly  in  the 
church  as  early  as  1623  and  while  Ann  Hathaway 
Shakespeare  still  lived,  and  there  is  no  record  of  any 
body's  denying  its  authenticity  as  a  likeness.  It  is  not 
identical  with  the  famous  Kesselstadt  mask  which  has 
been  the  subject  of  more  discussion  than  any  piece  of 
plaster  ever  made.  This  latter  was  found  in  Germany 
some  time  ago  ;  it  bears  upon  its  back  the  initials  '  '  W. 
S.,"  and  the  date  "1618";  it  looks  like  the  alleged 
portraits  of  the  immortal  bard,  and  the  scholars  who 
believe  in  it  believe  in  it  implicitly,  while  those  who 
do  not  believe  in  it  do  not  believe  in  it  at  all!  It  has 
been  photographed  and  engraved,  but  no  copy  of  it  in 
plaster  or  in  wax  has  ever,  for  its  own  safety's  sake, 
and  very  wisely,  been  permitted.  It  is  said  that 
Chantrey,  the  sculptor,  refused  absolutely  to  accept  this 
head  as  authentic  on  the  ground  that  no  intelligent 
human  being  who  ever  lived  had  at  the  same  time  a 
forehead  so  high  and  an  upper  lip  so  long,  but  that  he 
changed  his  views  entirely  when  he  saw  the  mask  of 
Sir  Walter  Scott  and  found  by  actual  measurement 
that  Scott  was  quite  as  long  in  the  lip  and  equally  high 


192          £alhs  in  a  Xibrar? 

above  the  eyebrows.      And  Scott  he  freely  acknow 
ledged  to  have  been  a  human  being  of  intelligence. 

John  Aubrey  reported  Shakespeare  as  being  ' '  a 
handsome,  well-shap't  man."  The  Stratford  bust  is  a 
rudely  carved  sample  of  mortuary  sculpture,  no  better 
but  a  little  worse  than  the  average  examples  of  its  kind 
and  time.  It  was  originally  painted,  but  it  was  white 
washed  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  no  one 
knows  exactly  why,  by  Kdmund  Malone,  the  Shake 
spearian  commentator.  The  colours  were  restored, 
however,  about  forty  years  ago  as  nearly  as  they  could 
be  distinguished.  The  eyes  are  hazel,  the  hair  almost 
yellow,  the  jacket  is  of  red  under  a  black  stole.  The 
hands,  the  right  holding  a  quill-pen,  rest  on  a  pillow 
of  red,  yellow,  and  green  ;  and  the  general  colour  effect 
is  startling. 

The  Scott  mask,  from  death,  in  the  collection,  if  it  is 
not  from  the  original  mould,  is  certainly  not  an  early 
impression.  The  matrix  was  made  by  George  Bullock 
and  Bullock  and  Chantrey  both  based  their  busts  upon 
it,  while  L,andseer  used  it  as  the  model  for  a  painted 
portrait.  It  had  disappeared  for  many  years,  but  it  was 
found  again  by  Sir  John  Steel,  the  sculptor,— so  he  told, 
me  himself,  — in  an  out-of-the-way  corner  of  Abbotsford 
while  he  was  at  work  upon  the  Lockhart  monument  at 
Dryburgh  Abbey;  and  he  used  it  in  designing  the  head 
of  Scott  on  the  statue  in  Edinburgh,  a  replica  of  which 
ornaments  the  Central  Park,  New  York.  I  first  saw 
the  original  mask  at  "The  Scott  Centennial  Celebra- 


of  tbe  IRortb       193 


tion  "  at  Edinburgh  in  1871,  when  my  copy  was  ob 
tained.  But  I  have  never  been  able  to  see  the  life 
mask  of  Scott,  said  to  be  at  Abbotsford  and  said  to 
have  been  made  in  Paris,  nobody  knows  when  or  for 
what  purpose. 

An  aged  Scotchman,  a  member  of  Dr.  Wm.  H. 
Taylor's  congregation  in  New  York,  was  exceedingly 
proud  of  the  fact  that  he  had  been  the  private.  coach 
man  of  the  Wizard  of  the  North,  and  had  driven  the 
hearse  of  Scott  from  Abbotsford  to  Dryburgh,  that 
was  drawn  by  a  pair  of  Sir  Walter's  favourite  carriage 
horses.  About  half-way  on  that  sad  last  journey  they 
came  to  the  top  of  a  certain  little  hill  where  Scott  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  stopping  for  a  time  to  glory  in  the 
view  of  the  lands  he  loved  :  on  one  side  of  him  his 
present  home  ;  on  the  other  side  the  home  that  was  to 
be  his  until  eternity  began.  Here,  on  the  day  of  the 
funeral,  the  horses  halted  of  their  own  accord,  and  no 
persuasion  would  induce  them  to  move  forward  until 
the  customary  five  minutes  had  passed. 

"And  so,"  said  the  faithful  henchman,  "the  '  Shirra  ' 
was  able  to  look  around  him  once  again  !  '  ' 

Perhaps  the  clearest  and  most  perfect  masks  in  the 
collection  are  those  of  Dion  Boucicault,  the  actor,  and 
Palmerston,  the  statesman.  They  are,  both  of  them, 
the  earliest  if  not  the  only  transcripts.  In  the  Bouci 
cault  is  seen  every  line  that  the  face  possessed,  every 
crease  and  wrinkle  and  indenture  of  the  skin.  It  is  to 

be  regretted  that  the  artist,  Mr.  J.  Scott  Hartley,  cut 
13 


i94  Galfes  in  a  Xibrarp 

off  the  lower  part  of  the  back  of  the  head;  but  this  was 
necessitated  by  some  imperfection  in  the  mould. 

Boucicault  was  not  only  very  eminent  as  a  player  in 
his  peculiar  line  of  eccentric  comedy  but  he  was  won 
derfully  prolific  as  a  producer  of  plays.  He  was  the 
author,  adapter,  and  translator  of  more  dramatic  works 
than  any  man  of  his  time  and  perhaps  than  any  man 
of  any  time;  and  curiously  enough  nearly  all  his  work 
was  popular  and  good.  The  most  successful  of  his 
dramas  was  The  Colleen  Bawn,  which  was  taken  from 
a  story  of  Gerald  Griffin's  called  The  Collegians.  The 
heroine  of  a  play,  a  young  lady  always  arrayed  in  a 
red  cloak,  would  have  come  to  serious  grief  by  falling 
off  a  rock  in  the  Lake  of  Killarney — still  bearing  her 
name — if  it  had  not  been  for  the  phenomenal  efforts  of 
a  stage  Irishman  who,  at  the  risk  of  his  own  stage-life, 
leaped  an  incredible  number  of  feet — incredible  even 
for  an  Irishman  and  on  the  stage — and  carried  her, 
comparatively  dry,  red  cloak  and  all,  through  the 
raging  stage  billows  to  the  shore.  This  always 
brought  down  the  curtain,— and  it  usually  brought 
down  the  house. 

To  the  Palmerston  mask  are  still  adhering  a  number 
of  the  hairs  of  the  head  and  the  beard  which  were  torn 
from  the  flesh  in  the  matrix  and  then  torn  from  the 
matrix  in  the  cast.  They  seem,  somehow,  to  bring  one 
very  close  to  the  man  himself.  And  they  were  the 
subject  of  a  great  deal  of  excitement  and  newspaper 
comment  some  years  ago,  when  an  observing  student 


ipalmerston  anb  Disraeli        195 

discovered  them,  or  thought  he  had  discovered  them 
and  thereby  had  established  the  astounding  scientific 
fact  that  a  plaster  bust  could  raise  a  human  beard.  The 
face  of  the  subject  had  not  been  properly  prepared  for 
the  operation  ;  the  hair  was  torn  from  the  head  and  the 
cheeks  in  removing  the  matrix,  and  from  the  matrix 
in  removing  the  cast.  The  cast  of  Palmerston,  hair 
and  all,  came  from  the  studio  of  the  sculptor,  Mr.  Jack 
son,  and  I  cheerfully  paid  five  pounds  sterling  for  it, 
because  it  had  never  been  copied  or  reproduced  and 
is  absolutely  unique.  It  formed  the  basis  of  the 
statue  by  Jackson  now  standing  in  Westminster 
Abbey. 

The  Disraeli  mask — I  can  never  think  of  him  as 
Beaconsfield,  for  I  cannot  understand  how  a  man  who 
literally  made  himself,  and  made  himself  out  of  nothing 
and  so  great,  should  have  consented  to  let  his  sovereign 
make  him  so  little  as  the  latest  of  the  earls — the  Dis 
raeli  mask  is  a  cast  of  the  cast  from  which  Sir  Edgar 
Boehm  evolved  the  statue  also  now  standing  in  the 
Abbey.  I  purchased  it  from  an  assistant  of  the  sculpt 
or,  with  the  consent  of  the  sculptor's  son  and  heir,  and 
it  cost  me  a  guinea  —  without  any  beer  thrown  in. 
The  nose,  unhappily,  was  intentionally  broken  in  the 
original  cast  by  an  irresponsible  but  enthusiastic  ad 
mirer  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  who  hurled  a  hammer  at  it  in 
the  studio  one  day  because  the  Grand  Old  Man  of  his 
adoration  had  been  defeated  in  Parliament  by  the  ad 
herents  of  his  defunct  enemy.  More  than  one  expert 


196  ftalfts  in  a  library 

friend  of  mine  has  offered  to  restore  the  nose  from  pho 
tographs  of  Disraeli,  but  I  have  preferred  to  keep  it  as 
Nature — and  the  hammer — left  it,  rather  than  to  call 
in  the  aid  of  the  art  which  was  applied  to  the  renova 
tion  of  Harry  Edwards.  All  the  features  in  the  Boehm 
statue  in  the  Abbey  are,  of  course,  intact. 

The  mask  of  Edwards  was  found  upon  the  floor  of 
my  study  in  New  York  one  morning  in  many  frag 
ments,  the  hook  upon  which  it  was  hung  having  been 
insufficient  to  hold  its  weight.  Every  piece  was 
gathered  together  and  carried  to  the  invaluable  Mr. 
Decomps,  who,  with  the  utmost  patience  and  skill,  suc 
ceeded  in  making  a  perfect  whole  of  it,  although  he 
could  not  entirely  succeed  in  concealing  the  seams  and 
the  scars. 

"  Harry  "  Edwards,  as  he  was  known,  was  a  man  of 
charming  personality,  of  high  culture,  and  of  many 
friends,  all  of  whom  respected  as  well  as  loved  him. 
He  may  be  remembered  as  an  actor  of  charming  sim 
plicity  who  succeeded  John  Gilbert  as  "  leading  old 
man  "  in  Lester  Wallack's  famous  company  of  comedi 
ans;  while  to  many  persons  who  never  heard  or 
dreamed  of  him  in  connection  with  the  stage  he  was 
known  as  a  very  distinguished  entomologist,  a  part 
which  not  one  play-goer  in  a  thousand  ever  imagined 
his  playing  in  real  life.  He  was  the  author  of  certain 
standard  works  upon  insects  and  their  natures  ;  of  cer 
tain  sketches  and  tales — theatrical,— written  of  course 
in  a  lighter  vein  ;  and  he  was  happy  in  the  production 


197 


of  occasional  verse  in  the  way  of  prologues,  epilogues, 
and  the  like.  Not  one  of  my  friends  was  more  familiar 
with  and  more  interested  in  these  plaster  portraits  than 
was  Harry  Edwards  before  his  own  head  was  added  to 
the  group. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Collecting  of  the  Death  Masks  (Continued}— Dean  Swift— 
Franklin  —  George  Washington  —  Robespierre  —  Marat  — 
Mirabeau — Edmund  Keane — Thackeray — Celia  Thaxter — 
Lord  Brougham— Laurence  Sterne— Lincoln  and  Booth — 
Walt  Whitman — Liszt — Process  of  Taking  a  Life  or  Death 
Mask— Casts  of  Hands  That  Have  Done  Things. 

How  well  I  remember  John  McCullough's  coming 
into  the  "  scullery  "  one  autumn  morning,  putting  his 
hands  in  his  hearty  way  on  my  shoulders,  and  asking, 
"  How  's  the  dear  mother? " 

He  had  been  over  the  ocean  and  travelling  about  our 
own  country  for  half  a  year  and  he  had  never  heard  ! 
When  I  told  him  "  how"  he  sat  down  and,  literally, 
he  lifted  up  his  voice  and  wept  aloud.  The  shock  of 
what  I  had  to  tell  him  and  of  what  he  felt  his  innocent 
query  must  have  meant  to  me  who  mourned  her  recent 
loss  was  too  much  for  his  already  over-sensitive  nerves 
and  his  already  failing  mind.  After  he  had  recovered 
himself,  in  a  way,  he  asked  one  more  question.  I  know 
not  why.  I  had  never  thought  of  such  a  thing.  Death, 
for  once,  had  come  too  near  home  to  me.  But  he  looked 
around  at  the  casts  on  the  shelves  and  on  the  walls, 
and  he  asked  tremulously  : 

11  Is  she  here?" 

198 


Belief  of  tbe  iprofession        199 

"  No,  John,"  I  replied,  "  she  is  not  here  !  " 

And  before  many  months  had  passed,  poor  John 
himself  was  there. 

When  Mr.  H.  H.  Kitson,  the  sculptor,  sent  me  the 
McCullough  mask  I  hardly  recognised  it.  The  changes 
in  his  face  and  expression  were  so  great.  And,  some 
times,  it  shakes  my  faith  in  the  value  of  these  casts  as 
portraits.  For  it  is  so  unlike  the  man,  sound  of  brain 
and  of  body,  whom  I  had  known  so  well  and  liked  so 
much.  His  features  as  well  as  his  intellect  seem,  alas, 
to  have  gone  awry. 

Like  all  the  members  of  his  profession,  McCullough 
accepted  Shakespeare  as  the  author  of  Shakespeare's 
plays,  and  he  literally  worshipped  the  genius  of  their 
creator.  It  was  a  matter  of  great  pride  with  him  that 
his  most  lasting  monument  was  a  portrait  of  himself, 
hanging  in  the  Shakespeare  Memorial  Theatre  at 
Stratford,  in  the  erection  of  which  he  was  so  much 
interested. 

A  man,  great  in  his  own  way  but  very  far  removed 
from  the  American  actor  in  time,  in  place,  in  thought, 
in  surroundings,  went  also  awry.  The  Irish  Dean, 
author  of  "Gulliver's"  famous  Travels,  is  supposed  to 
have  died  in  Dublin  of  softening  of  the  brain.  Dr., 
and,  later,  Sir  William  Wilde,  the  father  of  Mr.  Oscar 
Wilde,  wrote  a  book  once  to  prove  that  Jonathan  Swift 
was  sane  and  unusually  sane  to  the  end  of  his  life. 
But  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Swift's  biographer,  thought 
otherwise.  They  both  of  them  knew  and  examined 


200  Galfcs  in  a  library 

and  commented  upon  the  death  mask,  kept  for  many 
years  in  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  They  realised  and 
acknowledged  its  authenticity.  Dr.  Wilde  compared 
it  with  the  cast  and  the  drawings  of  Swift's  skull,  made 
when  his  body  was  exhumed  in  1838,  and  he  accepted 
it  as  Swift  himself.  Whether  Swift  died  "  a  driveller 
and  a  show,"  matters  not.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the 
original  mask,  according  to  Dr.  Wilde,  disappeared 
from  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  in  1845  or  1846,  and  that 
a  copy  of  it,  identical  with  Dr.  Wilde's  engraving  of  it, 
came  into  my  possession  some  forty  years  later  through 
a  little  dealer  in  plaster  casts  in  London  whom  I  never 
found  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  evening  in  a  condition 
of  perfect  sobriety.  He  could  never  explain  how  he 
became  possessed  of  it  and  he  did  not  even  know  whose 
mask  it  was.  And  so  what  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
Ireland,  has  lost  forever,  the  University  of  Princeton, 
New  Jersey,  America,  now  owns. 

Swift  and  "  Stella  "  were  buried  side  by  side  in  the 
Cathedral  at  Dublin,  and  nearly  a  century  after  the 
Dean's  death  their  coffins  were  opened  by  the  members 
of  the  British  Association,  then  holding  its  annual 
meeting  in  the  Irish  capital.  The  skulls  were  ex 
amined  and  cast,  and  Dr.  Wilde's  book  contains  draw 
ings  of  them  both.  Where  the  original  casts  of  these 
skulls  are  now  I  have  never  been  able  to  learn. 

A  mask  of  Franklin  is  known  to  have  been  made  by 
Houdon  in  Paris  a  few  months  before  Franklin  sailed 
from  France  for  the  last  time  and  not  long  before  he 


H  Jfamilp  ILifcenesa  201 

died.  It  was  sold  with  the  rest  of  Houdon's  effects  in 
1828  or  1829  and  it  is  supposed  to  have  come  into  the 
collection  of  George  Combe. 

This  Franklin  mask  has  been  the  subject  of  some 
discussion  and  doubt.  Many  of  the  portrait-experts 
have  accepted  it  as  genuine  and  without  hesitation, 
while  others  have  questioned  and  even  repudiated  its 
authenticity  entirely.  Among  these  latter  was  Mr. 
Abraham  Hewitt,  who  was  the  fortunate  possessor  of 
the  replica  of  the  Houdon  bust  and  who  could  trace 
no  resemblance  between  the  cast  and  the  sculptured 
marble.  Mr.  John  Bigelow,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
author  of  a  Life  of  Franklin,  and  naturally  very  fa 
miliar  with  his  face,  as  it  has  come  down  to  us  in  many 
contemporary  paintings  from  miniatures  up  to  can 
vases  of  heroic  size,  is  inclined  to  believe  that  mine 
was  taken  from  life  in  Franklin's  old  age  and  by 
Houdon. 

To  satisfy  myself  and  without  giving  any  hint  as  to 
who  or  what  I  wanted  to  think  it,  I  showed  the  object 
once  to  Mr.  Richard  Irwin,  a  direct  descendant  of  the 
great  philosopher.  He  had  no  idea  of  what  was  com 
ing,  he  did  not  know  that  such  a  thing  was  in  exist 
ence,  but  the  moment  he  saw  it  he  exclaimed:  "  Why, 
it  's  Sophie!  "—Sophie  being  his  sister,  Miss  Sophie 
Irwin,  and  a  great-granddaughter  of  Franklin  who  is 
said  to  have  perpetuated  his  own  features  in  hers. 
Other  members  of  his  family  have  seen  and  recognised 
the  likeness.  This,  perhaps,  would  not  have  been 


202  Galfcs  in  a  library 

proof  enough  in  a  court  of  law,  but  it  convinces  me  in 
my  readiness  to  be  convinced. 

Franklin  was  buried  in  Philadelphia.  His  grave, 
near  the  back  wall  of  the  cemetery,  is  under  the  small 
unpretentious  stone  which  the  iconoclasts  have  not 
spared.  What  punishment  is  meet  for  the  man  who 
would  chip  a  piece  off  of  the  monument  of  Franklin 
with  which  to  make  a  paper-weight  or  to  set  in  a  spiral 
stud? 

Franklin  brought  Houdon  to  this  country  in  1785, 
when  he  spent  some  days  in  the  familiar  study  of 
Washington's  face,  and  when  he  made  a  life  mask 
which  he  carried  back  to  France  and  from  which  he 
evolved  the  familiar  statue  now  in  Richmond,  Virginia. 
As  his  stay  in  America  was  short  and  as  he  was  not 
likely  to  see  Washington  again,  he  manipulated  the 
mask  in  certain  ways,  and  this  will  account  for  the  fact 
that  the  eyes  are  open.  The  original  cast  belonged  to 
W.  W.  Story,  the  artist  in  words  and  marble,  who 
had  its  established  pedigree  from  Houdon' s  hands. 
Story  always  declared  that  his  was  the  only  cast  from 
the  mould  and  that  it,  itself,  had  never  been  moulded. 
Naturally  he  doubted  the  authenticity  of  my  copy  and 
of  the  copy  in  the  Corcoran  Gallery  in  Washington 
City  ;  and  for  that  reason  his  cast,  not  mine,  was  with 
his  consent  reproduced  as  the  illustration  to  my  book. 
When  I  went  to  Rome  last,  in  the  winter  of  1892-93,  I 
naturally  asked  to  see  the  Washington  mask.  In  this 
Mr.  Story  could  not,  at  first,  gratify  me.  He  knew 


]faiber  of  ©ur  Country     203 


that  it  was  in  his  studio  ;  but  he  could  not  find  it,  —  at 
the  moment  !  If  a  man  had  confessed  to  me  that  he 
had  mislaid  his  mother-in-law  or  his  second  daughter, 
as  if  one  were  an  umbrella  and  the  other  a  lead-pencil, 
I  could  hardly  have  been  so  greatly  shocked.  I  could 
no  more  have  mislaid  such  a  treasure  than  I  could 
have  mislaid  my  own  head  or  my  own  right  hand. 
But  it  was  found  in  a  forgotten  closet  after  a  while  and 
reverently  examined.  All  the  texture  of  the  skin  was 
visible  and  hairs  —  of  Washington  —  were  still  attached 
to  the  nostrils  and  to  the  eyelashes.  There  had  been 
more  hairs,  Story  told  me,  but  these  had  been  given 
one  by  one  and  only  one  at  a  time  to  be  set  in  rings 
and  brooches  by  relic  hunters  whom  I  envied. 

Another  mask  of  Washington  was  attempted  in  1783 
by  Joseph  Wright,  but  it  was  broken  before  it  was 
"  set."  The  fact  that  the  Father  of  our  Country  ob 
jected,  with  strong  language,  on  that  occasion  to  sub 
mit  to  a  repetition  of  the  performance  may  prove, 
perhaps,  Mr.  Paul  Leicester  Ford's  assertion  that  while 
Washington  always  told  the  truth,  he  told  it  sometimes 
with  pardonable  emphasis.  This  operation  by  Wright 
was  performed  at  Mount  Vernon  and  it  was  one  of  the 
few  associations  connected  with  his  home-life  that 
Washington  did  not  care  to  dwell  upon.  The  Houdon 
cast  was  made  in  Philadelphia  two  years  later  when 
the  subject  was  about  fifty-three  years  of  age. 

Finding  no  very  perceptible  traces  of  the  fractured 
jaw-bone  in  the  Robespierre  mask,  I  was  in  doubt  as 


204  Galfcs  in  a  library 

to  its  authenticity  until  I  compared  it  with  what  is 
claimed  to  be  the  original  wax  effigy  contained  in  the 
gallery  of  the  Tussauds  in  L,ondon.  Madame  Tus- 
saud,  the  founder  of  the  famous  Wax-Works  Show, 
was  a  French  woman  of  intelligence  and  veracity  who, 
many  years  ago,  purchased  in  Paris  and  carried  to  the 
British  capital  a  number  of  the  personal  relics  of  Bona 
parte — the  bed  upon  which  he  died,  his  toilet  articles 
and  the  like,  including  the  Antomarchi  mask,  and  she 
had  documents  to  prove  that  these  with  the  masks  of 
Marat  and  Robespierre  were  what  her  printed  cata 
logues  still  declare  them  to  be. 

Robespierre,  you  may  remember,  attempted  or  pre 
tended  to  have  attempted  to  blow  off  his  own  head 
with  a  pistol  bullet  before  his  compatriots  should  have 
a  chance  to  cut  it  off — clean — with  the  artistic  knife 
invented  by  Dr.  Guillotine.  This  mask,  with  those 
of  Marat  and  Mirabeau,  is  known  to  have  been  made 
after  death  "  by  order  of  the  National  Assembly,"  and 
the  originals  of  those  of  Marat  and  Mirabeau — identi 
cal  with  mine — are  in  the  Musee  Carnavalet,  the  Civic 
Museum  of  Paris ;  Marat  in  plaster  being  the  exact 
counterpart  of  Marat  in  oils  by  David,  painted  from 
nature  immediately  after  the  assassination. 

The  amiable  Miss  Corday  did  a  good  thing  for  France 
and  for  humanity  and  for  the  rights  of  man  when  she 
removed  Marat  from  trials  and  temptations.  And  it  is 
to  be  regretted  that  she  did  not  begin  earlier  in  her 
career.  There  can  be  very  little  doubt  that  the  Marat 


flDirabeau  ant>  flfcarat          205 

whom  she  stabbed  in  the  bath,  as  depicted  by  David, 
was  the  Marat  of  real  life  as  the  cast  in  my  collection 
embalms  him  for  the  inspection  of  generations  yet  un 
born.  Some  one  has  said  of  him  that  "  he  looked  like 
an  American  Indian  with  a  white  skin." 

It  is  said  that  Mirabeau  listened  once  with  com 
placent  eagerness  to  a  certain  fine  lady  of  his  acquaint 
ance  who  was  making  a  word-picture  of  her  beau  ideal 
of  manly  beauty.  The  description  of  the  face  and  the 
figure  of  the  imaginary  Adonis  entirely  coincided  with 
his  own  notions  upon  the  subject,  and  when  the  com 
posite  form  was  completed,  the  lady  paused  as  if  to 
worship  in  silence  her  own  creation,  and  Mirabeau 
added  in  a  half  interrogatory  sort  of  way: 

"And  a  little  pock-marked,  too,  don't  you  think?" 

The  signs  of  the  ravages  of  the  dreadful  disease  on 
his  own  face  are  plainly  visible  in  its  replica  in  plaster. 

Mirabeau  and  Marat  were  buried  for  a  time  in  the 
Pantheon  at  Paris  ;  but  they  were  soon  "de-Pantheon- 
ised"  by  order  of  the  National  Assembly.  Marat's 
body  was  thrown  into  a  common  sewer,  and  the  body 
of  Mirabeau  was  put  into  an  unmarked  grave  in  the 
criminals'  burying-ground.  Revenge  upon  the  bones 
of  a  dead  enemy  may  be  sweet,  but  it  can  hardly  be 
savoury. 

The  Garrick  mask,  like  the  cast  of  the  Shakespeare 
bust,  came  in  1876  from  the  shop  of  Mr.  Marshall  in 
Stratford,  who  wrote  its  pedigree  in  pencil  upon  its 
back.  Unfortunately  when  the  copy  was  made  for  The 


206  Galfcs  in  a  library 

Players  in  1888  the  writing  was  effaced  and  its  history 
I  can  not  now  recall.  A  copy  is  in  the  Shakespeare 
Museum  in  Stratford ;  and  a  third  copy  I  saw  in  Lon 
don  once,  this  last  being  a  very  early  impression  and 
showing  conclusively  that  it  was  made  from  nature 
and  probably  from  life,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  a 
rare  engraving  of  it,  not  dated,  bears  an  inscription 
stating  that  it  is  "  The  Mask  of  Garrick  taken  from 
the  Face  after  Death." 

There  are  two  alleged  death  masks  of  Edmund  Kean 
in  existence  which  do  not  in  the  least  resemble  each 
other.  One  is  reverently  preserved  in  the  rooms  of  a 
now  degenerate  dramatic  social  club  back  of  the  bar 
of  the  Harp  Tavern  near  Drury  Lane  and  Covent 
Garden  Theatres  in  London.  Tradition  hath  it  that 
Kean  was  a  member  of  this  institution,  and  the  mask 
hangs  over  the  chair  in  which  he  is  said  to  have  con 
sumed  glass  upon  glass  of  whiskey  after  the  play  and 
even  between  the  acts  ;  and  the  surviving  members 
point  with  great  satisfaction  at  a  hole  in  the  wall  oppo 
site  the  mask,  made  by  the  quart-cup  which  Kean  threw 
at  the  call-boy  who  ran  across  the  street  once  to  inform 
him  that  "  the  stage  waited." 

The  other  mask — my  mask — has  been  accepted  as 
the  real  Kean  by  Sir  Henry  Irving,  Edwin  Booth,  and 
other  lights  of  their  profession  ;  and  Sir  Henry  sees  in 
it  a  strong  likeness  to  George  Clint's  hurried  sketch  of 
Kean  which  he  now  owns  and  which  is  supposed  to  be 
the  only  portrait  for  which  its  subject  ever  consented 


ZTbacfcera?  207 


to  sit.  My  own  belief  is  that  mine  is  Kean  after  death 
and  that  the  other  is  perhaps  Kean  from  life — which  is 
very  probable, — or  perhaps  a  life  or  death  mask  of  the 
younger  Kean  ;  or,  more  likely  yet,  a  death  mask  or  a 
life  mask  of  somebody  else  unknown  to  fame  and  dead 
and  turned  to  clay.  Kean  died  and  was  buried  in  the 
town  of  Richmond  on  the  bank  of  the  Thames.  It 
was  hardly  the  lively  Richmond  of  the  present.  But 
not  a  bad  Richmond  to  die  and  be  buried  in  for  all  that. 
He  lies  in  Old  Richmond  Church  near  the  bones  of 
Thomson,  the  poet  of  The  Seasons,  and  not  far  from 
the  ashes  of  Burbage,  who  is  said  to  have  been  the 
original  representative  of  Kean's  great  part,  King 
Richard  the  Third. 

Coming  out  of  the  Harp  Tavern  one  day,  into  which 
I  had  gone  to  inspect  this  mask  and  not  for  any  social 
purpose,  I  stumbled  into  the  plaster  shop  of  Mr.  Bruc- 
ciani  hard  by,  where  I  discovered  and  bought  the  mask 
of  Thackeray  made  by  Brucciani  on  that  sad  Christmas 
morning  at  the  request  of  Dr.,  now  Sir  Henry,  Thomp 
son.  It  was  very  distressing  to  Thackeray's  mother 
and  to  his  daughters,  who  supposed  that  the  mould 
and  the  casts  from  it  had  been  destroyed  as  was  their 
strongly  expressed  wish.  Mrs.  Anne  Thackeray 
Ritchie,  the  novelist's  surviving  daughter,  finding  to 
her  surprise  in  1890  that  it  still  existed  and  had  come 
into  my  collection,  was  good  enough,  after  some  na 
tural  hesitation,  to  permit  me  to  have  it  engraved  for 
my  book  and  later  to  give  it  a  home  at  Princeton. 


208  £alft0  in  a  library 

Without  this  consent  of  course  it  would  never  have  met 
the  public  eye. 

Henry  Brougham,  the  great  Lord  Brougham,  is  said 
to  have  been  possessed  of  the  extraordinary  physical 
accomplishment  of  being  able  to  waggle  his  own  nose. 
It  was  a  good  nose  to  waggle.  And  for  years  it 
afforded  enormous  amusement  and  no  little  pecuniary 
profit  to  the  caricaturists  of  Great  Britain,  even  to 
those  of  his  own  political  party.  The  description  of 
this  famous  organ,  in  a  rare  book  called  Notes  on  Noses, 
is  too  good  to  be  lost  here  although  I  have  already 
quoted  it  in  the  Portraits  in  Plaster :  "  It  is  a  most 
eccentric  nose,"  says  the  author;  "  it  comes  within  no 
possible  category  ;  it  is  like  no  other  man  's ;  it  has 
good  points  and  bad  points  and  no  point  at  all.  When 
you  think  it  is  going  to  the  right  for  a  Roman  it  sud 
denly  becomes  a  Greek  ;  when  you  have  written  it 
down  cogitative  it  becomes  as  sharp  as  a  knife. 
Verily,  my  Lord  Brougham  and  my  Lord  Brougham's 
nose  have  not  their  likenesses  in  heaven  or  earth. 
And  the  button  on  the  end  is  the  cause  of  it 
all."  Why  the  button  on  the  end  should  mean  so 
much,  the  author  of  Notes  on  Noses  does  not  explain. 
The  Brougham  mask  was  one  of  the  original  group 
which  found  its  way  from  the  Second  Street  ash-barrel 
into  the  present  collection.  Combe  seems  to  have  car 
ried  it  to  America  while  the  subject  was  at  the  height 
of  his  power  in  England,  and  so  it  is  therefore,  of 
course,  from  life. 


Science  of  pb^eiognomi?       209 


Another  famous  nose  was  the  nose  of  Thomas  Paine. 
Mr.  Moncure  D.  Conway,  the  biographer  of  the  author 
of  The  Age  of  Reason,  agreed  with  me  that  mine  is  the 
mask  of  Paine,  and  that  it  is  the  work  of  Jarvis.  We 
compared  it  carefully  with  Jar  vis's  plaster  bust  of  Paine 
in  the  rooms  of  the  New  York  Historical  Society  and 
we  saw  many  points  of  absolute  resemblance,  especiall}*" 
in  the  size  and  the  twist  of  the  nose,  but  it  was  not  until 
Mr.  Con  way's  Life  and  my  own  book  had  gone  to  press 
that  he  found  a  manuscript  journal  of  Paine'  s  house 
keeper  which  assured  us  that  the  mask  had  been  made 
after  death  and  described  the  operation.  The  physiog 
nomists  tell  us,  on  the  strength  of  what  they  find  in  the 
cast  and  in  the  portrait  of  Paine,  that  he  was  a  man  of 
large  mental  capacity  but  lacking  in  thoroughness  and 
correctness  ;  that  he  was  impulsive,  self-willed,  and 
arrogant  ;  that  he  made  few  personal  friends  ;  and  that 
he  was  not  remarkably  distinguished  for  that  essential 
quality  of  which  he  wrote  so  fluently,  —  to  wit,  "  Com 
mon  Sense." 

I  was  at  Appledore,  one  of  the  Isles  of  Shoals,  one 
dreary  grey  autumn  day  in  1894  when  Celia  Thaxter 
died.  At  my  suggestion  and  with  the  consent  of  her 
own  people,  a  mould  of  her  beautifully  strong  face  was 
made  by  Mr.  Olaf  Branner,  who  also  chanced  to  be  at 
Appledore  at  that  time. 

It  happened  that  dear  friends  of  hers  and  of  ours 
were  dining  with  us  on  the  evening  of  the  day  on 

which  the  cast  came  to  me.     I  spoke  to  them  of  it  and 
14 


210  £alhs  in  a  Xibrar? 

they  expressed  a  wish  to  see  it.  I  told  the  butler, 
John,  to  bring  it  down-stairs  when  he  had  a  moment's 
leisure.  And  before  we  left  the  table  he  presented  the 
head — on  a  silver  charger — to  each  guest  in  turn.  It 
was  a  most  startling  and  unexpected  act  and  it  precipi 
tated  the  symposium  in  a  most  abrupt  manner.  Celia 
always  had  a  wholesome  sense  of  humour,  and  she 
would  have  appreciated  the  absurdity  of  the  perform 
ance,  perhaps.  But  those  of  us  who  loved  and  mourned 
for  her  saw  only  the  solemn  side  of  it.  It  is  the  first  or 
the  second  cast  from  the  matrix,  and  as  a  "specimen" 
it  is  peculiarly  strong  and  fine.  Nearly  the  whole  of 
Mrs.  Thaxter's  life  was  spent  on  one  or  the  other  of 
these  beautiful  little  sea-girt  islands  off  the  coast 
of  Maine.  She  was  born,  married,  and  buried  among 
them ;  there  her  children  were  born  ;  there  she  made 
and  kept  her  many  friends ;  there  she  did  her  work. 
A  veritable  queen  she  was,  not  only  among  the  humble 
fisher-folk  who  were  in  a  way  her  dependents,  but 
among  the  cultured  summer  guests  of  the  hotels,  not 
all  of  whom  were  her  intellectual  peers. 

I  had  so  little  faith  in  the  so-called  mask  of  I^aurence 
Sterne  that  I  did  not  put  it  into  my  book.  No  con 
temporary  record  of  it  exists,  and  I  did  not  see  in 
the  peculiarly  distressing  and  unusual  circumstances 
of  Sterne's  death,  how  it  could  possibly  have  been 
made.  He  died  in  poverty  and  almost  alone.  His 
body-servant,  nearly  the  only  friend  he  had,  subse 
quently  told  the  harrowing  story  to  the  world  with  all 


Haurence  Sterne  211 

its  painful  details  and  he  mentioned  no  taking  of  a 
mask.  The  subsequent  proceedings  were  the  most 
gruesome  of  all.  According  to  tradition,  a  friend  of 
his,  a  medical  student,  going  from  some  festive  party 
to  a  secret  dissecting  clinic,  found  to  his  horror  upon 
the  work-table  what  was  left  of  Laurence  Sterne.  He 
saved  the  fragments,  gathered  them  up,  and  buried  them 
in  St.  George's  Cemetery,  Bayswater  Road,  London. 

Under  these  conditions  it  seems  hardly  possible  that 
then  or  earlier  a  mask  could  have  been  made.  Never 
theless  the  face  is  very  like  that  of  the  Nolleken's  bust, 
the  portraits  by  Reynolds  and  Gainsborough,  and 
particularly  like  the  full-length  water-colour  drawing 
at  Chantilly.  But  I  cannot  vouch  for  it.  The  world 
is  not  so  apt  to  associate  Sterne  particularly  with  York 
Minster,  but  he  was  for  many  years  a  prebendary  of 
that  Cathedral  ;  learning  there,  no  doubt,  that  the  uni 
verse  was  wide  enough  to  hold  both  him  and  the  poor 
fly  and  that  God  tempers  the  wind  to  the  shorn  lamb,  al 
though  he  could  have  had  there  but  little  actual  know 
ledge  as  to  how  terribly  our  armies  swore  in  Flanders. 

Another  mask  by  Brucciani  was  that  of  Ben  Caunt, 
the  professional  prize-fighter  and  one-time  champion  of 
Kngland,  although  why  Brucciani  thought  the  bruiser 
worthy  of  a  death  mask  I  never  quite  understood.  Mr. 
Caunt,  with  a  broken  nose,  retired  from  the  slugging 
business  in  the  early  forties  and  kept  a  respectable 
sporting  public-house  called  "  The  Coach  and  Horses  " 
in  St.  Martin's  Lane,  London,  until  he  was  knocked 


212  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

out  forever  in  1861.  He  was  highly  regarded  by  the 
' '  fancy  ' '  for  many  years  ;  and  one  of  his  favourite 
pupils  was  Junius  Brutus  Booth,  who  presented  his 
son,  Edwin,  to  his  sparring  master  in  New  York,  when 
Edwin  was  a  lad  and  enormously  impressed  by  the 
honour.  He  had  seen  judges  on  the  bench  and  Presi 
dents  in  the  White  House  ;  but  nobody,  he  said,  ever 
impressed  him  so  much  as  did  the  king  of  the  ring. 

Caunt's  father,  when  Caunt  was  born,  was  a  tenant 
of  Byron's  at  Newstead  Abbey,  emplo)^ed  about  the 
grounds  in  some  very  humble  capacity.  The  pugilist 
was  fond  of  declaring  that  he  himself  had  been  a  game 
keeper  to  the  author  of  Don  Juan.  But,  as  Byron  sold 
Newstead  Abbey  when  Caunt  was  but  three  years  of 
age,  the  latter  must  have  been  a  very  precocious  young 
gamekeeper  indeed. 

Caunt's  was  one  of  the  two  masks  in  the  collection 
which  affected  Booth  most.  The  other,  naturally 
enough,  but  in  a  very,  very  different  way,  was  that  of 
— Lincoln.  I  shall  never  forget  the  first  time  he  saw  the 
Lincoln  mask.  He  asked,  innocently  enough,  whose 
it  was.  And  when  I  told  him,  my  heart  for  a  moment 
stopping  to  beat,  he  rose  from  his  seat,  took  it  in  his 
hands,  and  looked  at  it  for  a  long  time  without  a  word. 
What  it  meant  to  him,  we  can  imagine.  The  whole 
awful,  awful,  business  came  back  to  him.  The  mad, 
dead  brother;  the  martyred,  murdered  President.  Still, 
without  a  word,  he  put  it  back  in  its  place,  and  it 
seemed  to  me  as  he  did  so  that  he  kissed  it  with  his 


Xincoin  flfcasfcs  213 


fingers.  I  have  seen  him  in  that  room  look  at  it 
silently,  over  his  pipe,  many  and  many  a  time.  But 
he  never  touched  it  or  spoke  of  it  again,  even  to  me. 
What  he  thought  of  it,  Heaven  only  knows  ! 

The  story  that  Booth,  under  similar  circumstances, 
picked  up  the  cast  of  the  hand  —  not  of  the  head  —  of 
Lincoln  in  the  house  of  Lorrimer  Graham,  may  be  and 
probably  is  true.  But  this  must  have  been  some  years 
before  Booth  found  the  Volk  mask  in  my  studio  and  he 
never  mentioned  the  incident  to  me. 

Of  Lincoln  two  masks  were  made,  both  from  life. 
The  first  in  Chicago  in  the  spring  of  1860,  by  Leonard 
Volk  ;  the  second  in  Washington  some  years  later  by 
Clark  Mills.  The  Volk  mask,  without  the  disfiguring 
beard,  is  now  in  Princeton.  The  Mills  mask  belongs 
to  Mr.  John  Hay,  who  treasures  it  very  highly.  It  is 
so  reposeful  and  peaceful  that  it  has  been  mistaken  for 
a  death  mask,  even  by  such  expert  authorities  as  Mr. 
Saint-Gaudens,  and  the  expression  of  it  is  very  sad. 
For  a  long  time  I  could  not  account  for  the  curious  de 
pression  in  the  eyes  of  my  copy  of  the  Volk  mask  until, 
in  lifting  it  from  its  place  one  day  in  the  library,  I 
unwittingly  put  my  thumbs  over  the  eyeballs  and  dis 
covered  that  they  fitted  the  cavities  exactly  ;  and  I  could 
only  infer  that  some  heedless  person  had  done  the  same 
thing  before  the  plaster  was  entirely  dry.  The  mould 
was  made  on  one  piece  ;  and,  as  it  contains  both  ears,  it 
was  removed  with  difficulty.  Mr.  Volk  described  how 
Lincoln  himself  assisted  in  the  operation  of  his  own  relief 


2H  Galfce  in  a  library 

by  bending  his  head  forward  and  working  it  off  gradu 
ally  and  gently  without  injury  of  any  kind  to  his  face  or 
to  the  mould,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  plaster 
clung  to  the  high  cheek  bones  and  that  a  few  of  the  hairs 
of  his  eyebrows  and  temples  were  pulled  out  by  the  roots. 

Brucciani  also  made  the  mask  of  Rossetti.  There 
are  but  four  casts  from  the  mould.  Of  one,  in  the  pos 
session  of  Mr.  Hall  Caine,  that  gentleman  wrote  to  me: 
"  I  ought,  perhaps,  to  add  that  it  does  not  give  a  good 
impression  of  Dante.  The  upper  part  of  the  head  is 
very  noble  but  the  lower  part  is  somewhat  repellent." 
Mr.  William  M.  Rossetti,  from  whom  my  copy  came, 
wrote  of  it :  "I  should  say  that  my  family  and  myself 
do  not  at  all  like  this  vision  of  my  brother's  face.  In 
especial,  singular  as  it  may  sound,  the  dimensions  of 
the  forehead  seem  wofully  narrowed  and  belied.  But, 
of  course,  from  another  point  of  view  the  cast  tells 
truth  of  its  own  kind." 

I  can  see  in  the  Whitman  cast  the  same  wofully 
narrowing  of  the  forehead.  But  all  the  casts  tell  truth. 
They  must  tell  truth.  They  cannot  help  it.  The 
Whitman  mask  came  to  Princeton  through  me,  I  am 
happy  to  say,  from  a  good  Princeton  man,  the  late  Mr. 
Louis  C.  Vanuxen.  But  somehow,  although  it  is 
Whitman,  it  is  not  the  Whitman  I  knew.  Few  men 
ever  impressed  me  so  strongly  as  did  Walt  Whitman. 
It  was  his  personal  magnetism  that  appealed  most 
powerfully  to  me.  It  was  not  his  verse,  for  I  did  not 
understand  it  then,  and  I  do  not  altogether  compre- 


an  Iflnique  tfigure  215 

hend  it  now.  It  was  his  wonderful  physical  beauty. 
He  seemed  to  be  a  realisation  in  the  actual  flesh  of 
Michael  Angelo's  Moses,  or  of  some  of  the  ancient 
statues  and  paintings  of  Jove  himself.  I  wanted  to 
receive  his  blessing.  As  Cervantes  said  of  some  one  in 
the  translation  by  Jarvis: 

"  He  had  a  face  like  a  benediction." 

The  Whitman  mask  was  made  by  Mr.  Samuel  Murray 
of  Philadelphia,  assisted  by  Mr.  Eakins.  Mr.  Vanuxen 
gave  the  first  cast  from  the  matrix,  which  included  the 
chest  and  shoulders,  to  Mr.  H.  Buxton  Foreman,  the 
editor  of  Keats  and  Shelley  and  a  friend  and  admirer  of 
the  American  poet.  Mr.  Foreman  has  expressed  his 
intention  to  bequeath  his  copy  to  the  British  Museum. 
So  far  as  I  know  there  are  no  others  in  existence. 

I  can  well  remember  seeing  Whitman  before  the 
Civil  War — a  king-like  figure  despite  his  rough  clothes 
— sitting  on  his  favourite  throne,  the  box-seat  of  the 
Broadway  omnibus  of  the  period.  He  seemed  to  spend 
his  whole  time  in  riding  up  and  down  that  crowded 
thoroughfare,  studying  men  and  things,  no  doubt,  in 
the  glaring  light  of  the  New  York  Sun.  I  knew  even 
then  that  he  was  an  unique  figure  in  American  life,  the 
author  of  some  queer  sort  of  alleged  poetry  that  was 
already  being  talked  about  but  which  I  had  not  then 
tried  to  read.  So  when  an  uncle  of  mine,  a  youth  of  about 
my  own  age,  hailed  him  once  in  my  presence  from  a 
passing  omnibus  as  "  Walt !  "  I  was  greatly  surprised. 
I  did  not  suppose  that  anybody  could  call  him  "  Walt," 


216  ftalfcs  in  a  Xil>rar\> 

The  Liszt  mask  was  the  gift  of  another  good  Prince 
ton  man,  Mr.  Rudolph  Schirmer,  whose  father  brought 
it  to  this  country  from  Germany  shortly  after  Liszt 
died  in  1886.  As  a  mask  it  is  an  excellent  specimen. 
In  the  face  are  seen  traces  of  the  unusual  resemblance 
that  existed  between  Liszt  and  Ole  Bull.  Mrs.  Bull 
tells  of  her  husband's  being  frequently  mistaken  for  the 
harmonious  Abbe  and  of  his  being  the  recipient  of  ova 
tions  in  public  places  in  Germany  which  were  intended 
for  his  double, — demonstrations  of  popularity  which 
were  gratifying  neither  to  the  violinist  nor  to  the 
pianist,  each  of  whom  felt  himself  worthy  of  applause 
on  his  own  account. 

Edwin  Booth  gave  to  The  Players  the  original  mask 
of  Burke,  and  with  it  a  certificate  saying  that  it  was 
made  by  the  especial  desire  of  Queen  Caroline  ;  that  it 
came  from  George  IV.  to  a  Mr.  Nugent,  one  of  his  most 
excellent  Majesty's  gentlemen-in- waiting ;  by  whose 
nephew  it  was  sold  in  London  in  1890  or  1891.  The 
name  of  its  artist  is  unknown.  My  copy  of  it,  found 
in  London  long  before  Mr.  Booth  made  his  purchase, 
is  probably  from  the  original  matrix  •  but  for  some 
unknown  reason,  perhaps  by  accident,  the  moulder 
scraped  the  bridge  of  the  nose  in  the  moist  plaster, 
flattening  and  broading  it  out  of  natural  shape.  It  is, 
in  all  respects,  inferior  to  The  Players  cast. 

The  Curran  is  one  of  the  Combe  masks,  the  history 
of  the  discovery  of  which  I  have  related.  Curran  was 
not  distinguished  for  his  good  looks.  He  is  described 


Different  <X\>pee  217 

by  one  observer  as  being  * '  very  ugly  indeed,  with  a 
thick  complexion  and  a  protruding  underlip  on  a  re 
treating  face ' ' ;  and  Croker,  alluding  to  his  appearance, 
went  so  far  as  to  say  that  he  was  "  like  the  devil  with 
his  tail  cut  off,"  which  was,  no  doubt,  an  exaggera 
tion  !  But  even  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  who  was 
famous  for  the  flattery  he  heaped  upon  his  subjects, 
did  not  succeed  in  making  Curran  a  handsome  man. 
One  of  the  best  of  the  existing  portraits  of  Curran 
serves  to  establish  the  identity  of  the  death  mask  and 
to  show,  in  the  matter  of  looks,  what  manner  of  man 
was  Curran  during  his  life. 

Nature  made  Lawrence  himself  one  of  the  handsomest 
men  of  his  time.  And  this  is  more  evident  in  the  quick 
than  in  the  dead.  A  beautiful  life  mask  of  him  was 
taken  when  he  was  thirty-four,  but  unfortunately  only 
the  rare  engraving  of  this  is  in  my  possession.  I 
never  saw  the  plaster  and  I  question  if  it  now  exists. 
The  death  mask  was  made  by  Edward  H.  Bailey,  the 
sculptor.  It  does  not  strike  one  as  being  beautiful. 
.  The  tail-piece  of  my  published  book  on  the  subject 
of  masks  is  the  mask  of  a  living  Florida  negro  boy. 
The  original  head  was  on  the  shoulders  of  an  humble 
driver  of  mules  whom  Mr.  Thomas  Hastings,  the  archi 
tect  of  the  Ponce  de  Leon  Hotel  at  St.  Augustine,  em 
ployed  in  the  building  of  that  famous  house.  Mr. 
Hastings  gave  the  subject  a  dollar  to  sit  for  his  "  por 
trait  in  plaster ' ' ;  and  the  result  was  sent  to  me  as 
representing  the  lowest  intellectual  type  of  present-day 


218  Galhs  in  a  Xibran? 

humanity,  on  this  continent  at  least.     It  is  valuable 
only  for  comparison's  sake. 

The  process  of  making  a  mould  of  the  living  face  is 
not  quite  so  agreeable  as  is  sitting  for  a  photograph. 
I  have  quoted  here  very  little  that  is  contained  in  my 
already  printed  words  on  the  subject,  because  I  am 
trying  to  treat  my  subject  in  an  entirely  different  way 
and  from  an  entirely  new  point  of  view.  But,  from 
the  Introduction  to  Portraits  in  Piaster  I  take  an  eye 
witness's  account  of  what  happened  to  a  certain  Mr. 
A.,  in  Edinburgh  in  1845,  which  tells  the  story  in  full. 
"  The  person,"  we  read,  "  was  made  to  recline  on  his 
back  at  an  angle  of  about  thirty-five  degrees  and  upon 
a  seat  ingeniously  adapted  to  the  purpose.  The  hair 
and  the  face  being  anointed  with  a  little  pure  scented 
oil,  the  plaster  was  laid  carefully  upon  the  nose,  mouth, 
eyes,  and  forehead,  in  such  a  way  as  to  avoid  disturb 
ing  the  features  ;  and  this  being  'set '  the  back  of  the 
head  was  pressed  into  a  flat  dish  containing  plaster, 
where  it  continued  to  recline  as  on  a  pillow.  The 
plaster  was  then  applied  to  the  parts  of  the  head  still 
uncovered,  and  soon  afterwards  the  mould  was  hard 
enough  to  be  removed  in  three  pieces,  one  of  which, 
covering  the  occiput,  was  bounded  anteriorly  by  a 
vertical  section  immediately  behind  the  ears,  and  the 
other  two,  which  covered  the  rest  of  the  head,  were 
divided  from  each  other  by  pulling  a  strong  silken 
thread,  previously  so  disposed  upon  the  face,  on  one 
side  of  the  nose. ' '  The  further  remark  was  made  that 


process  219 


"  Mr.  A.  declared  that  lie  had  been  as  comfortable  as 
possible  all  the  time  ! ' ' 

This  last  statement,  judging  from  my  own  experi 
ences,  I  am  strongly  inclined  to  doubt.  An  artist 
friend,  who  said  he  knew  how  to  do  it,  kindly  volun 
teered  to  perform  the  operation  upon  me,  and  I  was 
anything  but  "  comfortable  all  the  time"  or  for  some 
time  afterwards.  I  was  placed  flat  upon  my  back  on 
the  laundry  table  in  my  own  house  ;  my  head  was  put 
upon  an  empty  soap-box  ;  around  niy  neck  and  behind 
my  ears  was  built  what  was  called  a  "  dam  "  of  softish 
clay  ;  and  quills  were  inserted  into  my  nostrils  that  I 
might  breathe  freely.  I  was  buttered  all  over,  literally, 
no  pure  scented  oil  being  available  ;  a  pad  and  a  pencil 
were  placed  in  my  hands  that  I  might  describe  my 
sensations  and  give  the  alarm  of  impending  suffocation 
if  necessary ;  and  the  plaster  was  applied.  I  do  not 
know  how  long  a  performance  it  was,  but  it  seemed  to 
me  to  be  a  year  and  a  day  before  the  thing  was  pro 
nounced  "set,"  and  the  heavy  burning  weight  was 
ready  to  be  removed.  And  then  the  trouble  began. 
The  operator  had  not  thought  the  strong  silken  thread 
essential ;  the  mould — it  was  of  the  face  only — was  in 
one  piece  as  in  the  case  of  the  Lincoln  mask  ;  and  it 
would  not  come  off !  The  butter  on  the  upper  lip  had 
not  been  spread  thick  enough,  and  the  long  hairs  of  a 
not  very  sparse  moustache  were  imbedded  in  the  fixed 
plaster  much  more  firmly  than  in  the  spot  of  their 
natural  growth.  The  filaments  yielded  at  the  roots 


220  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibran> 

and  beneath  the  roots  and  small  fragments  of  their 
native  soil  yielded  with  them  ;  but  the  plaster  gave  up 
nothing.  I  was  willing  to  sacrifice  my  moustache  for 
the  cause  of  science,  but  it  was  impossible  to  loosen  the 
matrix  sufficiently  to  insert  a  pair  of  scissors  or  a  razor 
beneath  it.  It  was  finally  broken  with  a  hammer  as 
gently  as  possible,  which  was  not  very  gently,  and  it 
was  consequently  absolutely  ruined  as  a  mould. 

The  artist  was  good  enough  to  offer  to  do  it  again. 
But  I  declared  then  and  there  that  no  other  mask  of 
me  should  be  taken  until  I  had  passed  into  a  condition 
of  total  indifference  to  worldly  things. 

I  have  been  asked,  frequently,  how  I  became  pos 
sessed  of  all  these  masks  of  men  and  women  so  varied 
in  character,  in  nationality,  and  in  social  position. 

How  does  the  angler  catch  his  fish  ;  how  does  the 
hunter  bag  his  game  ?  By  close  study  of  its  disposi 
tions,  its  habits,  by  a  thorough  knowledge  of  its  homes 
and  its  haunts.  The  first  cast,  as  I  have  shown,  was 
the  result  of  what  is  called  "  a  fluke."  I  baited  my 
hook  for  a  bullhead  and  I  killed  and  landed  a  salmon, 
which  is  the  king  and  the  most  gamey  of  all  the  fish 
that  swim.  In  my  journeyings  about  the  world,  on 
the  continents  of  America  and  Europe  and  in  fractions 
of  Asia  and  Africa,  for  many  years  I  have  fished  and 
hunted  for  masks.  I  went  to  the  studios  of  sculptors, 
to  the  public  museums,  and  to  the  plaster  shops.  Of 
these  last  I  made  a  list — from  the  Trades'  Directories — 
whenever  I  entered  a  strange  town;  and  I  visited  them 


arrangement 


all,  sometimes  with  success,  more  often  without.  In 
Rome  I  procured  three  casts  ;  in  Berlin  I  found  four  or 
five  ;  in  Paris,  half  a  dozen  ;  in  London,  eight  or  ten. 
Robert  Browning  and  Richard  Wagner  with  a  half- 
forgotten  Doge  or  two  are  treasured  in  the  City-built- 
on-piles,  but  no  influence  or  persuasion  of  mine  could 
put  them  into  my  basket  or  my  bag.  The  capital  of 
the  German  Emperor  was  more  generous  and  obliging. 
In  the  Hohenzollern  Museum  there  is  the  largest  but 
not  the  most  interesting  collection  of  such  things  in  the 
world.  They  are  purely  local  and  national  — * '  por 
traits  in  plaster ' '  of  royal  personages  and  of  civic  or 
state  dignitaries  little  known  or  little  honoured  outside 
of  their  own  country. 

Of  these  I  cared  only  for  the  Great  Frederick,  for  the 
beautiful  Louise  of  Prussia,  for  Schiller,  Mendelssohn, 
and  Beethoven.  They  are  kept  in  a  great  hall,  in  a 
series  of  boxes,  looking  like  the  desks  of  a  public- 
school,  and  each  by  itself  is  revealed  by  the  opening 
of  a  lid,  as  if  one  were  inspecting  in  succession  a  row  of 
coffins  and  was  permitted  to  gaze  for  a  moment  upon 
each  pallid  face  in  turn — by  no  means  a  cheerful  or  an 
exhilarating  experience.  This  ghastly  effect  I  have 
tried  as  far  as  possible  to  avoid  in  arranging  my  galaxy 
of  genius  in  the  University  Library  of  Princeton.  I 
want  the  collection  to  attract,  not  to  repel ;  to  instruct, 
not  to  disgust. 

The  authorities  of  the  Hohenzollern  Museum  granted 
me  replicas  of  the  casts  I  wished  upon  the  assurance 


222  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

that  they  were  not  to  be  used  by  me  for  commercial 
but  purely  for  scientific  and  educational  purposes,  and 
upon  the  strength  of  valuable  letters  of  introduction. 

The  general  notion  of  the  money  value  of  these  masks 
is  very  vague.  The  newspapers  all  over  the  country 
not  long  ago  stated  gravely  that  I  had  refused  thirty 
thousand  dollars  for  the  collection.  I  was  never  offered 
any  amount  of  money  for  it  or  for  any  part  of  it,  and 
its  actual  cost  to  me — in  cash,  not  in  time — was  a  very 
much  smaller  sum. 

A  gentleman  wrote  to  me  once  that  he  had  the  mask 
of  Madame  Malibran,  the  opera-singer ;  that  he  could 
vouch  for  its  authenticity  because  it  was  made  by  his 
'father;  and  that  he  would  sell  it  to  me,  in  the  cir 
cumstances,  for  a  thousand  dollars.  I  replied  that  I 
had  a  written  certificate  from  Malibran' s  son,  declaring 
that  his  own  father  had  made  it ;  and  that  for  my  copy, 
an  early  one,  I  had  paid  fifty  cents. 

I  received,  at  The  Players,  one  day,  a  letter  from  a 
well-known  sculptor  saying  that  he  had  taken  a  cast 
of  an  equally  well-known  man  of  the  brush,  recently 
dead  ;  that  he  had  not  been  successful  in  finding  a 
market  for  the  bust,  based  upon  it ;  and  that  he  would 
sell  me  the  mask  for  twenty-five  hundred  dollars.  I  read 
the  epistle  aloud  to  the  group  of  sympathising  members 
of  the  club  with  whom  I  chanced  to  be  sitting,  all  of 
whom  knew  the  artist  and  his  subject,  and  I  remarked 
that  "when  the  time  came  to  take  a  mask  of  the  sculptor 
there  would  not  be  plaster  enough  to  cover  his  cheek  ! ' J 


Casts  of  1banb0  223 

This  observation,  never  intended  to  be  made  public 
of  course,  found  its  way  into  print ;  and  it  very  nearly 
forced  me  to  become  the  defendant  in  a  suit  for  libel. 

The  collection  of  casts  of  hands  that  have  done 
things  has  been  an  interesting  side  issue  to  my  quest, 
although  of  sufficient  value  to  be  considered  a  pursuit 
in  itself.  In  my  Princeton  library  I  have  hung  the 
contrasting  hands  of  Voltaire  and  Walt  Whitman  side 
by  side.  Similar  casts  of  the  former  are  common  ob 
jects  in  the  plaster  shops  of  Paris,  and  the  original  cast 
is  generally  accepted  as  made  from  nature,  although 
there  seems  to  be  no  authentic  record  to  this  effect. 
Above  it  in  my  library  is  the  written  motto,  translated 
from  a  letter  of  Voltaire  to  Cardinal  de  Berins  in  1761: 
[<  There  are  truths  which  are  not  for  all  men,  nor  for 
all  times."  And  above  the  cast  of  Walt  Whitman's 
hand  is  the  inscription,  taken  from  his  Leaves  of  Grass  : 
"  One  world  is  away  and  by  far  the  largest  to  me,  and 
that  is  myself.  And  whether  I  come  to  mine  own  to-day 
or  in  ten  thousand  or  ten  million  years,  I  can  cheerfully 
take  it  now  or  with  equal  cheerfulness  I  can  wait." 

This  cast  was  made  by  a  friend  of  Walt  Whitman's 
who  contributed  it  to  the  collection.  My  first  meeting 
with  Walt  Whitman  recalls  exceptionally  pleasant 
reminiscences.  I  was  taken  to  call  upon  him  in  1877 
— Whitman  at  that  time  being  fifty-eight  years  old — by 
Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge,  of  whom  he  was  very  fond  ; 
and  in  that  way  I  got  closer  to  him  than  I  could  have 
done  in  a  dozen  casual  meetings.  His  talk  was  plain, 


224  ftalfts  in  a  library 

homely,  and  tinged  with  an  unexpected  vein  of  ' '  that 
most  uncommon  sense  of  all,  common  sense."  After 
he  went  back  to  Carnden  he  sent  me  two  volumes  of 
his  poems — in  exchange  for  a  ten-dollar  bill — with  an 
autograph  inscription.  I  prize  the  books  highly,  al 
though  I  never  read  them.  I  saw  him  a  short  time 
before  his  death,  looking  like  a  god  as  painted  by  one 
of  the  old  masters,  and  again  I  came  under  his  peculiar 
magnetic  influence.  He  drew  me  down  upon  the  arm 
of  the  chair  in  which  he  was  sitting  and  held  my  hand 
while  he  talked  with  me.  This,  no  doubt,  was  his  way 
with  all  men,  but  he  made  me  feel  as  if  I  were  so 
distinguished  above  the  rest,  and  in  spite  of  myself  I 
became  an  enthusiastic  worshipper  of  Walt  Whitman 
— the  man. 

The  casts  that  I  own  of  the  hands  of  Lincoln, 
Thackeray,  and  Goethe  are  casts  from  casts,  and  as 
such  are  none  of  them  so  communicative  of  "  the  touch 
of  a  vanished  hand."  They  are  also  less  clear  in  detail 
and  less  perfect  of  outline.  That  of  Goethe  was  found 
in  a  plaster  shop  in  Berlin  many  years  ago. 

The  original  of  Thackeray's  hand  was  owned  by 
Augustin  Dal}7  and  was  sold  at  the  auction  of  his 
effects  for  the  exorbitant  sum  of  $110  to  Dean  Sage. 
There  is  an  account  in  Daly's  letters  of  the  manner  in 
which  possession  of  the  cast  of  Thackeray's  hand  was 
obtained.  As  will  be  remembered,  Thackeray  died  in 
great  pain,  and  the  fingers  are  noticeably  clinched  into 
the  flesh  as  they  were  found  that  sad  Christmas  morn- 


ifoanbs  of  Lincoln         225 


ing  by  the  mother  of  the  novelist  who,  as  Dickens  said, 
blessed  him  not  only  in  his  first  sleep  but  in  his  last. 

The  hands  of  Lincoln  —  whom  I  never  saw  but  once, 
and  that  was  when  he  was  making  a  speech  on  the 
steps  of  the  Astor  House  in  New  York  on  his  way  to 
Washington  —  were  taken  by  Leonard  W.  Volk  in 
Springfield,  111.,  on  the  Sunday  following  Lincoln's 
nomination  in  1860.  Mr.  Volk  was  the  first  Chicagoan 
to  congratulate  Lincoln,  and  at  the  same  time  he  made 
an  engagement  for  the  following  day  to  obtain  a  cast 
of  Lincoln's  hands.  Later  that  same  afternoon,  thou 
sands  marched  to  Lincoln's  home,  passing  through  the 
house  in  single  file,  each  citizen  giving  Lincoln  a  vigor 
ous  hand-shake.  The  swollen  muscles  that  resulted 
from  this  reception  are  quite  noticeable  in  the  cast. 
The  originals  are  of  bronze  and  are  in  the  National 
Museum  ;  but  they  had  disappeared  and  were  virtually 
forgotten  until  Mr.  Saint-Gaudens  found  them  by  acci 
dent  in  a  vault  adjoining  either  the  Smithsonian  Insti 
tute  or  the  Patent  Office.  This  was  not  known  to  me 
till  I  was  told  quite  recently  about  it  by  Mr.  Saint- 
Gaudens  himself. 

The  only  bronze  cast  I  own  is  that  of  the  hands  of 
the  Duke  of  Wellington.  They  are  crossed,  and  not 
upon  the  hilt  of  a  sword,  and  there  is  supposed  to  be 
no  other  copy  of  the  cast  in  America.  I  do  not  know 
by  whom  it  was  made,  but  think  it  was  originally  done 
for  a  statue  of  the  Duke. 

Sir  Edgar  Boehm  made  the  cast  of  Carlyle's  hands 
15 


226  aalfce  in  a  Xibrar? 

that  was  loaned  to  the  Carlyle  Museum  in  Chelsea, 
where  I  saw  it  in  1899.  Upon  learning  that  they  had 
been  loaned  by  a  sculptor  whose  studio  was  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Cheyne  Row,  I  went  to  the  address 
given,  where  I  was  told  that  the  owner  was  taking  a 
holiday  on  the  Continent.  On  the  way  out  of  the  little 
courtyard,  I  noticed  the  shop  of  a  manufacturer  of 
plaster  casts,  and  found  an  Italian  inside  who  spoke 
very  little  Knglish  and  who  was  eating  his  luncheon. 
Several  specimens  of  famous  statuary  were  produced, 
such  as  are  used  by  pupils  who  are  studying  black  and 
white  in  the  art  schools.  "  No,"  said  I,  "  I  want  the 
real  hands  of  famous  folk." 

The  man  had  nothing  but  the  hands  of  Carlyle,  cast 
with  the  mask,  after  death,  in  Carlyle' s  house.  These 
he  was  ready  to  sell,  but  felt  that  he  could  not  part 
with  the  cast  for  less  than  two  shillings,  or  fifty  cents. 
After  some  apparent  hesitation  we  agreed  to  this  price : 
my  real  feeling  being  that  it  was  well  worth  $50  to  me. 
The  man  offered  to  pack  the  cast  and  send  it  after  the 
purchaser,  but  I  carried  my  new  treasure  off  in  a  silk 
handkerchief,  and  from  Chelsea  to  Princeton  virtually 
held  it  in  my  lap.  So  far  as  can  be  ascertained,  no 
other  replicas  exist. 

A  gift  from  William  M.  Rossetti  was  the  cast  of  the 
hand  of  his  brother,  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,  that  was 
made  at  the  same  time  as  the  death  mask. 

Yet  another  gift  was  the  plaster  hand  of  Robert 
is  Stevenson, —  with  the  forefinger  between  the 


Gbe  SainWBaubens  fIDebalHon    227 

leaves  of  a  book, —  cast  by  Mr.  Saint-Gaudens  as  a 
guide  for  the  large  upright  medallion  now  built  into  the 
mantelpiece  of  the  library  in  the  house  of  Mr.  George 
Armour  in  Princeton.  A  replica  of  this  medallion  was 
made  and  sent  by  Mr.  Saint-Gaudens  to  Stevenson  in 
Samoa,  but  it  never  reached  its  destination  nor  could 
it  be  traced.  Mr.  Saint-Gaudens  afterwards  made  a 
second  copy  of  the  original  which  is  now  in  the  San 
Francisco  home  of  Mrs.  Stevenson. 

How  the  cast  of  Whittier's  hands  came  into  my 
possession  I  cannot  remember ;  but  I  do  remember 
how,  on  one  occasion,  they  were  put  into  the  lap  of  the 
wonderful  Helen  Keller,  of  whom  Mrs.  Hutton  is  guar 
dian.  She  instantly  recognised  the  hands  as  those  of 
Whittier,  but  said: 

'  *  Take  them  away,  take  them  away  !  they  are  so 
hard  and  cold  and  dead,  —  not  the  responsive  and 
affectionate  hands  of  dear  Mr.  Whittier  whom  I  knew 
so  well!  Take  them  away!  Please  take  them  away!  " 

Of  all  the  casts  I  ever  saw,  I  consider  that  of  Helen 
Keller  the  most  perfect  one  taken  from  nature.  It  was 
made  about  two  years  ago,  and  it  is  of  her  left  hand, 
the  hand  by  which  she  reads  the  raised  letters  of  the 
electrotyped  page  before  her.  Under  it,  as  it  hangs  in 
the  library,  is  written  : 


She  is  deaf  to  the  sounds  all  about  us, 
What  she  sees  we  cannot  understand, 

But  sbe  hears  with  the  tips  of  her  fingers, 
And  her  sight 's  in  the  touch  of  her  hand. 


228  ftalhs  in  a  library 

Why  the  cast  of  the  hand  of  the  artist,  William 
Hunt,  is  also  the  left  instead  of  the  right,  no  one 
knows.  It  may  be  that  Mr.  Hunt  was  left-handed,  or 
it  may  be  that  his  right  hand  was  injured  at  the  time 
of  his  death. 

No  cast  of  Charles  Dudley  Warner's  hands  was 
thought  of  when  his  mask  was  taken  after  death  ;  and 
so  much  did  I  regret  this  that  Mrs.  Warner  had  made 
an  enlargement  of  a  small  picture  in  which  Mr.  War 
ner's  hands  were  prominent,  and  gave  it  to  me.  Fail 
ing  an  autograph  inscription,  there  is  a  note  attached 
to  the  frame  of  the  picture,  containing  the  following 
words: 

"HARTFORD,  Dec.  2,  '94. 

"  DEAR  LAURENCE  AND  HIS  WIFE, 

11  BOTH  BELOVED: 

"  We  go  down  Friday  morning  and  shall  spend  the 
night  with  Mrs.  Youmans,  corner  5th  Avenue  and 
28th  Street,  and  I  shall  go  round  to  see  you  if  I  can. 
We  sail  on  La  Champagne,  Pier  4,  foot  of  Morton 
Street,  Saturday  noon.  If  we  do  not  see  you,  you  will 
know  that  we  love  you,  and  love  is  enough. 
"  Yours  affectionately, 

"  CHARLES  DUDLEY  WARNER." 

Upon  the  back  of  the  photograph  of  the  Chopin  cast 
is  written: 

"  The  cast  of  Chopin's  hand  was  formerly  the  pro 
perty  of  A  Gentleman.  By  him  it  was  given  in  1880  to 
Countess  Castelvecchio,  then  residing  in  Florence,  and 


Bn  Egyptian  iprincess         229 

it  came  to  me  direct  from  a  member  of  her  family  in 
1898. 

"  The  drawing  of  Chopin  by  Winterhalter  was  also 
formerly  in  A  Gentleman's  possession,  and  is  dated 
May  2,  1847. 

"  (See  Weeks's  Life  of  Chopin,  p.  344.) 

11  ED.  HENNKLL." 

This  is  supposed  to  be  the  only  cast  of  Chopin's  hand 
in  existence.  Mr.  Hennell,  a  diamond  merchant  of 
Bloomsbury,  at  whose  house  are  to  be  met  many  inter 
esting  people,  gave  it  to  me. 

One  of  my  treasures  is  the  hand  of  an  Egyptian 
mummy, — no  cast  this,  nor  photograph,  but  the  verita 
ble  hand, — bought  just  outside  the  Tombs  of  the  Kings 
from  an  Arab  who  produced  it,  with  great  secrecy, 
from  the  folds  of  his  single  garment,  and  who  accepted 
for  it  just  exactly  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  price  he 
originally  asked.  On  its  being  unpacked  with  many 
other  rare  possessions  in  the  Thirty-fourth  Street  house, 
an  old  family  servant  asked  what  it  was. 

11  The  hand  of  an  Egyptian  princess,"  I  told  her,  "  a 
princess  of  the  time  of  the  Exodus — it  may  be  the  hand 
of  Pharaoh's  daughter  herself." 

Whereupon  the  woman  called  in  some  excitement  to 
a  little  serving-maid  of  the  house: 

"  Come  here,  Maggie:  I  want  you  to  shake  hands, 
Maggie,  with  the  hand  that  may  have  shaken  hands 
with  Moses !" 


CHAPTER  IX 

Obituary  Notices — Professional  Readers — Demands  upon   Au 
thors—The  Duties  of  Editors— The  Mistakes  of  Compositors. 

THE  most  trying  and  most  nerve-tearing  work  I  ever 
did  was  the  writing  of  the  obituary  notices  of  my  own 
personal  friends  before  their  deaths.  It  is  hard  enough 
to  learn  to  talk  of  those  we  love  in  the  past  tense  when 
the  tense  is  past ;  but  when  one  is  forced  thus  to  write 
of  men  still  in  the  flesh,  of  men  with  whom,  perhaps, 
one  is  still  brought  into  daily,  intimate  contact,  the 
task  is  sometimes  heart-breaking.  Not  a  few  tears 
have  I  shed,  of  a  morning,  over  men  with  whom  I  have 
laughed  the  night  before,  and  with  whom  I  hoped  to 
laugh  for  many  years  to  come.  They  knew  of  the 
laughter.  But  they  never  heard  of  the  tears, — at  the 
time.  Perhaps  when  that  eternity  is  reached  where 
they  are  to  shed  no  more  tears  they  will  learn  all  about 
it. 

The  first  of  these  ante-mortem  requiems  was  my 
"  Memoir  of  Booth,"  written  for  Harper's  Weekly  when 
it  was  seen  that  the  fatal  hour  which  his  friends 
dreaded,  but  which  he,  himself,  did  not  dread,  was  so 
soon  to  come.  He  told  me  one  night,  when  I  occupied 

230 


Booth's  ©Wtuar?  231 

one  of  his  rooms  at  The  Players,  and  as  I  helped  to 
undress  him  and  to  "  tuck  him  "  into  his  bed,  that  his 
only  fear  was  a  long,  helpless  invalidism,  involving 
weeks  and  months  of  a  rolling  chair  or  a  sofa  ;  was  to 
be  fed  and  waited  on  by  others ;  to  be  a  nuisance  to 
himself  and  to  his  people.  And  he  added  that  he 
would  lay  his  head  on  his  pillow  and  go  to  sleep  with 
perfect  contentment  if  he  were  sure  that  he  would 
awake  in  "  The  Mysterious  Somewhere- Else,"  to  which 
he  was  not  afraid  to  go.  When  I  looked  at  him  the 
next  morning,  that  beautiful  head  resting  upon  his 
arm,  his  eyes  closed,  his  face  in  absolute  repose,  his 
breathing  hardly  perceptible,  I  thought  for  a  moment 
that  the  hour  he  hoped  for  had  come  ;  and  I  was  almost 
glad,  for  his  own  dear  sake. 

That  day,  and  not  until  that  day,  did  I  consent  to  do 
what  my  editors  wished.  They  thought  that  I  knew 
more  of  his  inner  life,  more  of  the  man  as  a  man,  and 
not  as  an  actor,  than  did  any  other  available  writer  ; 
and  the  sorrowful  task  was  performed,  to  be  put  away 
for  a  few  short  months  and  published,  alas,  too  soon. 

I  wrote,  in  the  same  sad,  anticipatory  way  of  poor 
Barrett,  of  Bunner,  of  Kate  Field,  as  I  saw  them  or  as 
I  heard  of  them  slowly  dying.  I  wanted  the  world  to 
know,  so  far  as  I  could  tell  it,  what  I  knew  of  the  good 
that  was  in  them  ;  and,  hard  as  it  was,  I  realised  that 
what  I  had  to  say  could  not  be  said  by  me  under  the 
pressure  of  personal,  present  grief. 

I  have,  carefully  housed  in  editors'  safes,  long  obit- 


in  a  Xibrar? 


uary  notices  of  two  men,  still  living,  who  are  very  dear 
to  me.  And  the}1  both  know  it.  What  I  am  to  put  on 
record  concerning  Mr.  Joseph  Jefferson  when  he  joins 
the  enormous  majority  will  be  said  with  his  knowledge, 
in  a  way,  and  partly  at  his  own  suggestion.  What  I 
said  about  Mark  Twain  when  the  report  came  to  us, 
happily  to  be  contradicted,  of  his  lying  at  the  point  of 
death  in  some  far-away,  strange  city,  during  his  me 
morable  journey  around  the  world,  I  would  permit 
Mark  to  read,  if  I  were  not,  man-like  and  Scotch-like, 
ashamed  to  let  him  understand  how  much  I  love  him, 
how  dearly  I  prize  his  affectionate  friendship.  May 
they  rest  unread,  carefully  stowed  away  in  the  editors' 
safes— those  two  brief  chronicles —for  many  years  to 
come. 

I  spent  on  one  afternoon  late  in  November,  1898, 
some  ten  minutes  or  so  in  Mr.  Jefferson's  room  at  the 
Holland  House,  New  York.  He  had  been  quite  ill  for 
some  weeks,  but  that  day  he  was  very  bright,  and  full 
of  hope  and  of  interest  in  things  mundane  ;  and  as  we 
talked  and  laughed  together  I  had  —  all  the  while, 
weighing  me  down  like  a  lump  of  ice — that  obituary 
of  him  in  my  pocket !  I  did  not  expect  to  see  him  ;  I 
did  not  think  of  the  horrible  bit  of  manuscript  as  I  sent 
my  card  to  him,  until  suddenly  its  presence  flashed 
upon  me, — and  I  felt  like  a  literary  ghoul ! 

The  general  reading-public  must  be  astonished  some 
times  at  the  prompt  and  exhaustive  notices  which  the 
daily  journals  contain  of  important  personages,  who 


Journalistic  flDetbobs          233 

are  cut  off  suddenly  or  prematurely  in  the  midst  of  their 
life-work.  Long  and  immediate  articles  appear  con 
cerning  some  great  warrior  killed  at  the  head  of  his 
army  or  on  the  deck  of  his  ship  ;  of  some  political  ruler 
shot  by  the  hand  of  an  assassin  ;  of  some  author  or 
artist  found  dead  in  his  bed,  or  thrown  from  his  wheel. 
But  these  articles  are  often  prepared  long  years  before 
they  are  used,  and  are  kept  "up  to  date  "  by  men  whose 
business  it  is  to  set  down  each  one  of  his  subject's 
public  acts  or  notable  achievements.  If  ex-President 
Harrison  marries  ;  if  ex-President  Cleveland  moves  to 
Princeton  ;  if  President  McKinley  signs  a  declaration 
of  war  with  Spain,  it  is  all  noted  under  the  proper  head 
and  with  the  correct  date ;  and  when  the  supreme 
earthly  hour  comes,  the  editor  has  but  to  press  the 
button  and  the  compositor,  and  the  printer,  and  the 
proof-reader,  and  the  newsboy  do  the  rest.  It  hap 
pens,  now  and  then,  that  the  obituary-writer  has  the 
weird  experience  of  reading  his  own  or  her  own  obit 
uary  notice — so  far  as  it  goes  !  Miss  Gilder,  detailed 
to  tell  the  sad  story  of  the  taking  off  of  John  Gilbert, 
the  actor,  properly  pigeon-holed  under  the  alphabetical 
Gil,  was  curious  to  look  a  little  beyond  the  consonant  b 
for  the  consonant  d;  and  there  she  found  what  was  to  be 
said  of  Gilder,  Jeannette,  the  morning  before  her  funeral. 
Of  all  the  manuscript  —  poetry,  sermon,  history, 
romance,  essay,  sketch,  story,  grave  or  gay,  long  or 
short,  wise  or  foolish — that  is  submitted  to  publishers 
of  books  or  periodicals,  it  is  estimated  that  but  ten  per 


234  ftalfes  in  a  Xibrarp 

centum  is  worthy  of  serious  consideration  and  that  not 
three  per  centum  is  likely  to  see  the  light  of  print. 
"  Professional  readers,"  like  all  other  men,  are  of 
course  not  infallible  ;  and  some  serious  mistakes  are 
make  in  the  best  regulated  of  establishments ;  but  the 
verdict  is  generally  just  and  according  to  the  evidence. 
Sad  is  it,  though,  to  think  of  the  hours  and  days  and 
weeks  and  months  and  even  years  spent  in  the  pro 
duction  and  in  the  elaboration  of  so  many  unavailable 
articles  ;  of  the  care  given  to  them,  of  the  life  and  heart 
put  into  them  ;  and  of  the  bitter  mortification  and  dis 
appointment  which  are  the  only  results. 

There  once  came  to  me  as  a  publisher's  "reader," 
from  a  town  in  the  far  north-east  of  these  United 
States,  the  manuscript  of  a  story  which  was  fully  twice 
as  long  as  Vanity  Fair  or  The  Pickwick  Papers.  Its 
manual  part  was  the  perfection  of  neatness.  It  was 
written  with  the  utmost  care  in  a  hand  beautifully 
clear  and  distinct ;  it  was  the  hand  of  a  slow  and 
laboured  writer,  and  it  was  the  hand  of  a  refined  and 
probably  a  youngish  woman.  Every  i  was  dotted  ; 
every  /  was  crossed ;  every  comma  was  in  its  place  ; 
the  French  and  the  Italian  words  and  the  English 
italicised  sentences,  which  were  many,  were  underlined 
by  means  of  a  ruler  and  with  a  coarser  pen  ;  the  thou 
sands  of  pages  of  heavy  foolscap  were  numbered  in  red 
ink  ;  the  chapter-heads  were  engrossed  in  Old  English 
text,  and  it  was  dated  on  the  last  leaf,  "  Christmas 
Day,  188—  " 


flMiblteber's  IReaber        235 


As  a  story  it  was  without  interest,  sequence,  some 
times  without  sense.  Its  acceptance  was  utterly  out 
of  the  question.  One  reader,  who  had  not  heard  my 
"  opinion,"  condemned  the  work  in  two  words  as  "  no 
good  !  '  '  And  when  I  saw  it  packed  to  be  returned  to 
its  creator  I  felt  as  if  I  were  an  executioner  attending 
the  funeral  of  some  widow's  only  child,  my  own  victim  ; 
as  if  I  were  a  murderer,  standing  by  a  casket  holding 
nothing  but  the  ashes  of  dead  hopes  ! 

The  publisher's  reader  works  in  the  dark  and  in  pro 
found  secrecy.  He  or  she,  very  frequently  she,  is  not 
permitted  to  exchange  views  with  the  other  readers 
until  the  final  judgment  is  put  on  record  ;  sometimes 
is  not  supposed  to  know  who  the  other  readers  are  ; 
and  is  rarely  permitted  to  know  the  name  of  the  author 
whose  work  is  to  be  read.  I  accepted  —  without  read 
ing  it  at  all  —  a  certain  story  called  Their  Pilgrimage 
because  I  recognised,  at  the  first  glance,  the  hand 
writing  of  Mr.  Charles  Dudley  Warner  and  because  I 
had  heard,  from  Mr.  Warner  himself,  that  it  had  been 
ordered  and  accepted  and  paid  for  in  part  already  !  It 
was  submitted  to  me,  I  presume,  as  a  test  and  because 
I  had  some  time  before  rejected  emphatically,  as  lack 
ing  in  everything,  a  romantic  tale  which  had  since 
been  accepted  and  published  by  another  house,  had 
been  universally  praised  by  press  and  public,  and  had 
sold  enormously.  I  do  not  care  much  for  the  matter 
or  the  manner  of  it,  to  this  day  ! 

On   the  other  hand,   I  urged  the  acceptance  of  a 


236  Gaifce  in  a  Xibran? 

serious  book  which,  as  I  understood  later,  every  other 
reader  on  the  staff  had  condemned.  It  seemed  to 
me  to  fill  every  practical  want,  to  have  all  the  merits 
and  few  of  the  faults  of  its  kind,  and  to  have,  above  all, 
the  not  common  merit  in  books  of  its  kind — to  wit, 
the  promise  of  popularity.  I  am  glad  to  say  that  it 
was  accepted,  and  I  am  proud  to  say  that  it  is  now 
universally  regarded  as  a  standard  work,  although  it 
was  a  first  effort  of  its  maker.  It  has  been  followed  by 
many  more,  written  at  the  publisher's  request,  and 
forming  now  a  very  valuable  library  of  their  own.  I 
met  the  author  once  at  a  dinner  party ;  but  I  never 
mentioned  the  fact  that  I  had  had,  by  chance,  the 
great  good  fortune  to  be  the  first  to  discover  him. 

The  professional  reader's  lot  in  life  is  not  always  a 
particularly  happy  one.  At  a  salary  ranging  from 
fifteen  to  twenty-five  dollars  a  week,  he  is  expected  to 
examine  into  the  worth  or  the  worthlessness  of  from 
three  to  six  examples  of  literary  manufacture  a  day  ; 
the  amount  of  his  wages  depending  upon  the  quality 
of  his  examples  ;  the  number  of  his  examples  depend 
ing  upon  their  length.  He  must  know  what  the  pub 
lisher  wants,  which  is  what  the  public  wants ;  for  the 
publishers,  no  matter  how  much  they  may  like  it  them 
selves,  cannot  afford  to  put  upon  the  markets,  at  con 
siderable  cost  of  production,  any  article  which  is  not 
likely  to  sell.  And  the  reader  must  know  why  it 
is  wanted.  Style  and  subject  may  be  admirable,  but 
if  the  subject  is  hackneyed  no  amount  of  style  will 


"©pinions"  237 


give  it  a  trade- value.  In  considering  translations,  the 
reader  must  try  to  discover  if  the  work  has  ever  be 
fore  been  rendered  into  English  and,  if  so,  by  whom, 
under  what  name,  how,  when,  and  where.  Before  the 
passage  of  the  American  International  Copyright  Law, 
he  had  to  find  out  if  any  British  work  submitted  to 
him  had  already  been  printed  in  this  country,  or  had 
been  imported  in  printed  form,  and  the  size  of  its  edi 
tion.  He  must  have  a  knowledge  of  books  and  of 
their  makers;  a  familiarity  with  standard  and  ephemeral 
literature  of  all  kinds  sufficient  to  admit  of  his  being 
able  to  detect  plagiarisms  of  plot,  of  expression,  and 
even  of  ideas.  He  must  overcome  his  own  personal 
prejudices.  He  must  keep  ever  in  his  mind  the  fact 
that,  even  if  he  is  not  cultivating  the  public  taste,  it  is 
at  least  his  bounden  duty  to  see  that  the  public  taste  is 
not  vitiated  by  bad  language,  bad  English,  bad  man 
ners,  and  bad  morals. 

He  must  write  and  sign  on  all  occasions  a  carefully 
prepared  "  opinion,"  as  it  is  technically  called,  giving 
as  concisely  and  as  clearly  as  possible  his  verdict  upon 
the  particular  piece  of  work  in  question  and  his  reasons 
for  delivering  that  verdict.  These  "  opinions"  are 
written  upon  uniform  paper ;  they  are  marked,  num 
bered,  and  dated  ;  they  are  folded  always  in  a  certain 
way ;  they  are  put  into  cases  made  for  the  purpose ; 
they  are  indexed  under  three  heads — the  name  of  the 
author,  the  name  of  the  reader,  and  the  title  of  the 
work ;  and  they  are  kept  for  many  years.  Some  of 


238  £alfcs  in  a  library 

these  "opinions"  are  literature  in  themselves  although 
never  to  see  the  light  of  print,  and  they  are  often  most 
interesting  reading  when  looked  at  in  the  light  of  sub 
sequent  results.  But  not  so  often  are  they  agreeable 
reading  to  the  reader  whose  "opinion"  is  shown  to 
have  been  wrong. 

Above  all,  the  reader  must  devote  a  good  many 
precious  hours  to  the  perusal  of  countless  pages  which 
cannot  interest  him,  which  often  bore  him,  and  which 
sometimes  shock  him,  at  a  stipend  of  from  two  arid  a 
half  to  four  dollars  a  day.  It  must  not  be  inferred 
that  he  is  dissatisfied  with  his  pay.  If  he  resigns  or  is 
removed,  there  are  many  others  ready  and  eager  to 
take  his  place  ;  for  he  is  a  lucky  workingman  of  letters 
who  can  earn,  readily  and  surely,  the  daily  wages  of 
a  plumber's  assistant  or  the  gas-man's  apprentice. 

The  ' '  special  reader  ' '  is  paid  by  the  piece  ;  usually 
five  dollars  for  each  work  submitted  to  him.  He  reads 
occasionally  and  only  the  subjects  relating  to  his  own 
particular  line  of  thought  and  study.  As  an  expert  in 
mathematics,  let  us  say,  or  geology  or  music  or  the  arts 
or  in  maritime  construction,  or  in  anything  else,  his 
opinion  is  of  course  valuable.  Not  regularly  attached, 
he  not  infrequently  reads  for  more  houses  than  one, 
and  as  books  are  passed  from  firm  to  firm  of  publishers, 
it  happens,  now  and  then,  that  the  "special  reader" 
is  paid  six  times  for  saying  to  half  a  dozen  differ 
ent  establishments  that  a  certain  work,  on  "  Ancient 
Hymnology,"  for  instance,  he  cannot  conscientiously 


jfrienbl?  Criticism  239 

recommena.  That  is  almost  the  only  kind  of  reading 
which  the  professional  reader  thoroughly  enjoys. 

Prominent  among  the  troubles  and  trials  of  the  pro 
fessional  writer  are  the  amateur  papers,  in  prose  and 
verse,  which  he  is  asked  to  read  and  to  criticise  and 
sometimes  to  find  a  market  for.  They  come  from 
friends  whom  he  would  like  to  help  and  to  encourage  ; 
and  they  come  from  utter  strangers  who  have  no  claim 
whatever  upon  his  time  or  his  attention.  The  strangers 
do  not  understand  how  much  they  are  asking  and  the 
friends  are  rarely  satisfied  with  the  results  of  their 
requests.  To  tell  a  young  man,  who  thinks  he  has 
ideas  and  the  gift  of  expressing  them,  that  his  ideas  are 
not  new  and  that  his  manner  of  expression  is  not  par 
ticularly  happy  is  an  exceedingly  unpleasant  and 
thankless  task.  Nevertheless  the  young  man  wants  to 
be  told  '*  the  whole  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth," 
and  he  does  not  believe  it  is  the  truth  when  he  hears 
it.  The  truth,  not  infrequently,  is  apt  to  be  so  un 
palatable  that  he  never  forgives  the  truth-teller  nor 
forgets  the  damage  done  to  his  pride  and  his  feelings, 
especially  if  the  candid  and  unvarnished  statement 
comes  from  an  author  with  whom  he  has  some  personal 
acquaintance.  No  one  but  the  author  knows  how 
much  of  the  harmony  of  familiar  intercourse  has  been 
wrecked  upon  the  rock  of  honest  criticism,  honestly 
but  inconsiderately  sought,  and  honestly  but  unwil 
lingly  granted. 

It  is  the  duty  of  the  editor  to  accept  or  reject.     That 


240  Gaifcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

is  what  he  is  an  editor  for ;  but  it  is  not  necessarily  his 
business  to  tell  the  "  reason  why."  If  the  submitted 
manuscript  is  printed  and  paid  for,  the  reason  why  is 
self-evident;  if  it  is  declined,  no  ''reason  why"  ever 
given  would  be  satisfactory.  And  the  editor  is  always 
to  blame.  He  is  not  disliked  so  heartily,  however,  as 
is  the  constant  contributor  or  the  occasional  contributor 
who,  without  having  the  power  to  reject  or  accept  any 
thing,  even  his  own  contributions,  is  expected  to  read 
carefully,  to  weigh  conscientiously,  and  to  give — for 
nothing  —  his  opinion  upon  a  piece  of  literary  work 
which  is  sometimes  good,  usually  indifferent,  and 
generally  bad.  If  he  says  it  is  good,  he  is  believed 
to  be  saying  merely  what  anybody  would  say;  if  he 
says  it  is  indifferent,  he  is  considered  impertinent  at 
least ;  if  he  says  it  is  bad,  he  is  not  only  a  fool  but  a 
brute  ;  and  if  he  refuses  to  say  anything  whatever,  he 
is  an  impertinent  brute  and  an  idiot  combined.  And 
all  this  is  brought  about  through  no  fault  or  voluntary 
act  of  his  own. 

There  seems  to  be  an  impression  afloat  among  ama 
teur  authors  that  nepotism  and  personal  favouritism  are 
strong  powers  in  the  editorial  sanctums.  There  is,  of 
course,  something  in  a  name.  The  public  likes  and 
demands  names  in  many  cases ;  but  the  editors  are 
anxious  to  find  new  names  that  are  attached  to  new 
thoughts  and  to  new  gifts  ;  and  they  prefer,  naturally, 
something  good  under  a  name  unknown  to  fame,  to 
something  indifferent  or  bad  signed  by  a  name  that 


Jfalee  flDoralit?  241 

has  already  made  itself  famous  or,  at  least,  familiar. 
And  in  many  instances  this  work  of  the  'prentice  hand, 
because  it  is  good  work,  but  rough,  is  polished  and 
scoured  and  scraped  and  patched — by  means  of  the  tra 
ditional  blue  pencil  and  with  great  patience  and  infinite 
pains — until  it  is  fit  for  use. 

This  patching  and  scraping  and  cutting  and  fitting, 
by  the  way,  is  another  great  trial  to  the  practised 
writer,  although  he  often  has  to  endure  it.  He  does 
not  always  see  the  reason  or  the  necessity  for  it ;  he 
protests  against  the  twisting  of  what  he  considers  one 
of  his  happiest  phrases  or  the  absolute  elimination  of 
what  he  knows  to  be  one  of  his  best  thoughts.  And 
when  one  hyper-moral  editor,  in  a  description  of  a  rail 
way  accident,  cuts  down  fifteen  flasks  of  whiskey  to 
two ;  and  when  another  very  particular  editor  turns 
the  familiar  quotation  "  Damn  the  critics  who  damned 
the  play  "  to  "  Dash  the  critics  who  dashed  the  play," 
the  author  rebels  altogether — if  he  can  afford  to  ! 

When  The  Boy  I  Knew  was  telling  the  young  readers 
of  St.  Nicholas  how  he  and  his  friend,  Bob  Hendricks, 
smoked  their  first  cigar,  ' '  half  a  cigar  left  by  Uncle 
Phil,"  and  how  they  wished  they  had  n't,  the  editors 
asked  him  to  throw  away  the  half  of  Uncle  Phil's 
cigar.  No  self-respecting  boy,  they  said,  would  think 
of  going  to  his  father's  box  and  taking  out  of  it  a 
whole,  new  "  Delicioso,"  for  that  would  be  stealing; 
but  he  might  be  tempted  to  pick  up  a  stump  from  the 
ash-tray,  and  try  that — "  if  the  idea  was  put  into  his 

16 


242  Galfcs  in  a 


head  !  "  "But  him  no  buts,"  they  said,  paraphrasing 
Aaron  Hill  in  The  Snake  in  the  Grass  ;  and  the  butt 
was  put  entirely  out  of  the  reach  of  the  innocent  boy, 
who  looked  around  for  another  butt  no  doubt.  And 
no  doubt  he  wished  he  had  n't  ! 

On  a  certain  centennial  occasion  I  wrote,  by  request 
and  without  payment,  for  a  daily  illustrated  journal  of 
New  York,  an  article  upon  the  performance  at  the 
"John  Street  Theatre,"  just  an  hundred  years  before 
that  night,  of  a  fine  old  comedy  presented  by  a  fine  old 
company  of  comedians.  I  stated  precisely  where  the 
'  '  John  Street  Theatre  '  '  had  stood  ;  on  the  north  side, 
between  Broadway  and  Nassau  Street,  directly  in  the 
rear  of  Mr.  Grant  Thorburn's  famous  seed-shop;  Grant 
Thorburn  having  been  in  his  day  a  well-known  "char 
acter"  of  the  town.  I  added  that  then  there  still  ex 
isted  the  alley-way  leading  to  the  stage-door  of  the  old 
house  of  entertainment,  along  which  the  performers, 
professional  and  amateur  —  Major  Andre  among  the 
latter  —  used  to  pass  before  the  Revolution  and  shortly 
after  the  Independence  of  the  United  States  was  de 
clared  and  recognised.  The  proof  of  the  article  came 
to  me  as  I  had  written  it,  and  it  was  read  and  returned. 
But  when  the  paper  appeared  all  mention  of  '  *  Grant 
Thorburn's  famous  seed-shop  "  had  disappeared.  The 
professional  blue  pencil  had  wiped  it  out  of  newspaper 
existence.  When  I  asked  the  reason  why,  I  was  told 
that  the  matter  had  been  laid  before  Grant  Thorburn's 
descendants  and  successors,  who  had  refused  to  pay  for 


"Comics"  243 


my  unconscious  and  undreamed-of  advertisement ;  and 
the  ellipsis  had  been  the  result.  This  closed  my  con 
nection  with  the  daily  illustrated  journal  in  question. 
And  shortly  afterwards  the  daily  illustrated  journal  in 
question  closed  its  connection  with  itself. 

A  short,  so-called,  poem  of  mine  was  cut  out  bodily 
from  a  longish  prose  paper  by  another  editor,  on  the 
ground  of  its  indelicacy;  but  it  was  permitted  to  stand 
alone  in  the  columns  of  Life.  It  was  called  ' '  The 
Modest  Maples";  and,  at  the  risk  of  shocking  you,  I 
venture  to  quote  it  in  full  : 

The  willows  wept  that  the  summer  was  dead, 
As  they  shrank  in  the  bleak,  autumn  air ; 

And  the  maples  all  blushed  a  rosy  red, 
At  the  thought  of  their  limbs  being  bare  ! 

What  are  technically  called  "  Comics,"  it  may  be 
said  in  passing,  bring  twice  as  much  in  verse  as  in 
prose  and  the  manufacturer  of  such  articles  naturally 
works  for  the  better  paying  market.  The  * '  Wail  of 
the  Waves,"  with  its  climactical  play  upon  words,  was 
originally  written  as  a  prose  dialogue  between  a  mother 
and  her  inquiring  son.  After  it  was  accepted,  and  paid 
for  in  that  form  with  a  small  check,  a  second  play 
upon  words  occurred  to  me  ;  it  was  amended,  put  into 
rhyme,  and  the  check  was  doubled  !  As  an  object-lesson 
it  is  here  appended,  as  it  was  finally  given  to  the  wor?d: 

"  What  are  the  wild  waves  saying, 

As  over  the  sands  they  sigh  ? 
Why  do  they  groan  and  grumble  ? 
Is  it  'cause  they  are  tied  so  high  ?  " 


244  {Talks  in  a  library 

"  My  child,  the  wild  waves  murmur, 

And  angry  passions  show, 
Because  some  careless  wader 

Has  stepped  on  their  under-toe  !  " 

Still  another  of  the  trials  of  the  editor  is  the  receipt 
and  sometimes  the  acceptance  of  stolen  goods.  The 
dishonest  writer  who  is  not  afraid  and  not  ashamed  to 
steal  away  the  brains  of  other  persons  and  to  sell  them 
for  profit  is  hardly  so  unfamiliar  an  object  in  the  world 
of  letters  as  he  is  supposed  to  be.  He  may  be  a  pick 
pocket  or  a  sneak- thief,  merely  filching  ideas  or  frag 
ments  of  plots  ;  or  he  may  be  a  burglar  or  a  highway 
robber,  out  and  out,  breaking  in  or  knocking  down  and 
taking  away  bodily  whole  poems,  whole  essays,  whole 
stories,  changing  the  labels  and  the  trade-marks  and 
disposing  of  them  to  innocent  parties.  No  matter  how 
well-read  the  editor  may  be,  he  cannot  possibly  have 
read  everything  ;  certain  clever  counterfeits  and  imita 
tions,  now  and  then,  escape  the  eye  of  the  sharpest 
detective  and  are  passed  upon  him,  and  by  him  are 
passed  along,  to  his  own  no  little  chagrin,  and  to  the 
great  delight  of  other  editors,  when  the  fraud  is  dis 
covered. 

While  I  have  no  knowledge  of  ever  being  caught  by 
the  issuer  of  stolen  goods,  it  is  only  because  I  have  had 
so  little  occasion  to  be  deceived  in  that  way.  But, 
although  I  never  posed  as  a  victim  to  the  literary  con 
fidence  game,  a  much  worse  fate  befell  me  once  when  I 
was  accused  of  having  stolen  the  goods  myself !  The 


"Unconscious  plagiarism        245 

case  was  a  peculiar  one  ;  and  the  coincidence  was  cer 
tainly  remarkable — if  it  were  a  coincidence. 

There  was  told  me,  at  a  Boston  dinner-table  one 
night,  the  little  story  of  a  little  girl  who,  without  her 
mother's  knowledge,  was  embroidering  something  for 
her  mother's  Christmas.  The  child — child-like — was 
very  eager  to  finish  it — just  to  see  how  it  would  look  ; 
and  she  fretted  herself  into  a  sort  of  semi-nervous  fever 
in  her  excited  haste.  At  last  her  aunt,  who  was  in  the 
secret — and  so  was  the  mother,  for  that  matter,  al 
though  she  was  to  pretend  to  be  greatly  surprised — at 
last  the  aunt  said  to  the  child:  "  Don't  be  in  such  a 
hurry,  Elsie.  There  is  plenty  of  time.  Rome  was  not 
built  in  a  day,  you  know  !  "  ' '  Rome  not  built  in  a 
day,  Auntie  ? "  came  the  quick  and  incredulous  reply. 
"  Rome  not  built  in  a  day  !  Why  !  God  made  the 
whole  world  in  six  days.  And  surely  He  did  not  spend 
all  of  one  day  on  Rome. 

I  asked  permission  to  put  the  tale  into  print  and  to 
give  the  proceeds  to  Blsie  as  a  Christmas  gift  on  my 
own  account.  Shortly  after  it  appeared  in  "  Harper's 
Drawer,"  to  Elsie's  great  pride,  there  came  to  the 
Harpers,  from  a  lady  living  at  the  other  end  of  the  land, 
a  severe  letter  stating  that  she  was  the  mother  of  the 
child— whose  name  was  not  Elsie  ;  that  she  had  sent 
the  contribution  to  the  Magazine  many  years  before  ; 
that  no  notice  was  ever  taken  of  it  then  ;  that  some 
member  of  the  editorial  staff  had  appropriated  it  now  ; 
had  slightly  altered  it — but  had  not  improved  it, — and 


246  ttaihs  in  a  library 

that  she  wanted  pecuniary  damages  !  There  was  no 
record  of  such  an  article ;  no  one  remembered  it  or 
anything  like  it ;  but  in  defence  of  my  own  reputation 
for  honesty  I  was  compelled  to  get  certificates  from 
Elsie's  family  proving  that  the  remark  was  original 
with  Elsie  and  Elsie's  very  own. 

That  some  small  minds  think  alike  on  great  occa 
sions  all  editors  know.  When  Miss  Willing' s  en 
gagement  to  Mr.  Astor  was  announced  some  years 
ago,  Puck  received  fifty  or  an  hundred  single  para 
graphic  contributions  to  the  effect  that  Jack  asked  her 
and  she  was  willing  !  And  the  personal  play  upon 
the  proper  names  in  every  variety  of  verbal  shape  was 
seen  in  every  so-called  comic  paper  in  this  country. 
The  joke— if  it  is  a  joke — was  a  palpable  one  which 
almost  made  itself ;  and  its  manifold  appearance  can 
easily  be  accounted  for ;  but  how  could  Elsie  and  the 
other  child,  separated  so  far  in  time  and  space,  say  the 
same  unusual  thing,  under  the  same  uncommon  cir 
cumstances,  and  in  the  same  exceptional  way  ?  If  it 
was  mental  telepathy,  why  was  it  so  long  in  transmis 
sion  ?  Or  did  the  far-away  mother  dream  that  her  own 
daughter  had  said  it  in  some  previous  incarnation  ? 

This  is  respectfully  submitted  to  the  Society  for  the 
Encouragement  of  Psychical  Research. 

It  is  not  true,  as  is  generally  supposed  and  as  is  so 
often  asserted,  that  manuscript  from  unknown  hands 
does  not  receive  just  care  and  prompt  attention.  The 
greater  part  of  it  is  the  recipient  of  more  attention  and 


Ibarper  IRing  247 


care  than  it  deserves.  It  is  read  —  although  not  all 
of  it  is  read  ;  and  it  has  every  possible  consideration. 
The  first  paragraph,  in  too  many  sad  cases,  shows  its 
absolute  lack  of  value  to  the  editor  or  the  public  ; 
while  in  the  fewer  instances  it  is  read  from  title  to 
finis,  it  is  conscientiously  considered,  weighed,  and 
measured  ;  and  if  the  pattern  be  a  pretty  pattern  and 
an  adaptable  one,  every  effort  is  made  to  find  a  place 
for  it  and  to  make  it  fit. 

Nor  is  it  true,  as  is  also  generally  supposed  to  be 
true,  that  any  amount  of  personal  or  professional  in 
fluence  has  any  weight  whatever  upon  the  professional 
decision  of  the  editor.  He  prints  what  he  considers 
good  and  proper  ;  not  what  is  declared  to  be  good  and 
proper  by  somebody  else,  no  matter  who  that  somebody 
else  may  be  and  no  matter  how  strong  may  be  that 
somebody  else's  alleged  "pull."  I  received  once  a 
bulky  package  of  manuscript  from  an  old  acquaintance 
who  said,  in  effect:  "  You  are  in  the  Harper  Ring  ;  you 
have  got  your  wife  into  the  Harper  Ring  ;  you  have 
got  Harry  This  and  Lilly  That  into  the  Harper  Ring  ; 
and  I  don't  see  why  you  don't  get  me  into  the  Harper 
Ring  too!  Here  are  a  couple  of  articles  as  good  as 
anything  the  Harpers  generally  publish.  If  the  one  is 
too  feminine  for  the  Magazine,  see  that  it  goes  into  the 
Bazar.  If  the  other  is  too  juvenile  for  the  Weekly, 
find  a  place  for  it  in  Young  Folks  [as  the  Round  Table 
was  then  called].  Anyway  see  that  they  are  published 
and  get  me  into  the  Harper  Ring  !  "  Happily  or  un- 


248  Galfce  in  a  Xibrar? 

happily,  for  me,  there  were  on  my  writing-table  at  that 
moment  four  official  notes,  one  from  each  of  the  editors 
of  the  periodicals  in  question,  and  each  one  of  them 
declining  a  contribution  of  my  own  !  I  put  them  into 
an  envelope  without  comment  and  sent  them  to  my 
correspondent  as  my  only  reply.  They  seemed  to 
prove  conclusively  that  I  was  not  in  the  Harper  Ring, 
although  I  had  been,  for  years,  on  the  editorial  staff  of 
the  Magazine  as  well  as  a  frequent  contributor  to  the 
other  journals  ;  and  I  hope  that  they  proved,  which  is 
certainly  the  case,  that  there  is  not  and  never  has  been 
a  Harper  Ring. 

I  started,  in  1893,  mv  semi-centennial  year,  to  make 
a  slow  and  deliberate  journey  around  the  world — "  My 
Pilgrimage."  I  spent  a  longer  or  a  shorter  time  each, 
in  London,  in  Paris,  in  Venice,  in  Florence,  in  Rome, 
in  Genoa, — all  of  them  more  or  less  familiar  to  me  ; 
and  also  in  the,  then,  to  me,  new  cities  of  Athens, 
Constantinople,  Cairo,  and  Jerusalem.  And  when  I 
felt  that  I  could  hold  no  more,  that  I  had  bitten  of  the 
fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  of  travel  all  that  I  could 
at  that  time  digest,  I  came  home.  As  a  member  of 
that  editorial  staff  of  Harper's  Magazine,  with  no 
authority  whatever  in  the  so-called  "Harper  Ring" 
except  over  my  own  particular  department,  I  was  asked 
in  every  one  of  these  cities  as  well  as  on  every  one  of 
the  steamers  sailing  the  Mediterranean,  the  Bosphorus, 
the  Adriatic,  and  the  Atlantic,  to  read  and  accept  some 
sort  of  a  contribution  to  that  publication.  In  London 


Xiterar?  troubles  249 

it  was  a  short  history  of  the  trade  guilds  and  an  ex 
cellent  one.  In  Paris  it  was  a  description  of  the  Car- 
navalet  Museum.  In  Venice  it  was  an  account  of  a 
trip  to  the  Kngadine.  In  Florence  it  was  the  story 
of  Dante's  career  there, —  about  which  I  myself  had 
already  written.  In  Rome  it  was  a  series  of  articles 
upon  the  home  life  of  the  Italian  King  and  Queen. 
In  Genoa  it  was  a  scientific  treatment  of  ancient  Italian 
coins.  In  Athens  it  was,  of  all  things,  a  tale  of  early 
Virginia.  In  Constantinople  it  was  the  true  account 
of  the  adventures  of  a  man  who  had  figured  in  a  ro 
mance  by  Mr.  Marion  Crawford.  In  Cairo  it  was  a 
disquisition  upon  the  folk-music  of  the  Arabs  as  com 
pared  with  the  songs  of  the  negroes  of  the  Southern 
States  of  America.  In  Jerusalem  it  was  a  paper  show 
ing  the  existence  of  petroleum  in  the  region  round 
about  the  Dead  Sea  and  the  money  that  was  in  it  to 
American  investors.  On  the  Bosphorus  it  was  a  report 
of  the  labours  of  the  American  missionaries  in  Turkey. 
On  the  Adriatic  it  was  ' '  Rhymed  Rules  for  American 
Leads  in  Whist."  And  on  the  Atlantic  it  was  just  a 
plain  little  poem  for  young  readers.  I  thought  I 
might  escape  this  last,  but  I  bet  a  big  cigar  that  it 
would  happen,  and  I  won  my  bet !  The  verses  were 
handed  to  me  as  we  passed  Fire  Island  on  our  way  to 
Sandy  Hook. 

They  were  each  in  its  line  good  enough,  or  so  it 
seemed  to  me.  I  took  them  all — although  I  did  not  read 
them  all — and,  except  the  verses,  which  I  presented 


250  Galhs  in  a  Xibran? 

in  person  the  next  day,  I  sent  them,  generally  at 
my  own  expense,  to  the  only  man  who  could  accept 
or  reject  them,  Mr.  Alden,  the  Editor-in-Chief  of 
Harper' s  Magazine,  over  whom  I  had  no  more  in 
fluence  than  has  any  one  of  his  other  friends. 

The  Cairo  incident  was,  perhaps,  the  most  amusing 
of  all ;  as  it  was,  in  a  measure,  the  most  disappointing 
to  my  personal  if  not  to  my  professional  pride.  I  had 
spent  some  six  or  seven  weeks  at  Shephard's  Hotel, 
visiting  from  day  to  day  every  nook  and  corner  of  the 
pla^e  ;  studying  the  mosques  ;  making  myself  familiar 
with  all  the  easily  reached  and  all  of  the  out-of-the-way 
bits  of  Oriental  architecture  ;  haggling  in  the  bazars 
for  scaribs  and  embroideries  and  things  I  did  not  want 
and  had  no  intention  of  buying  ;  mixing  freely  with  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  native  women  and  men  ;  going, 
generally  uninvited,  to  weddings  and  to  funerals ; 
drinking  queer  coffee,  queerly  made,  out  of  queer  little 
cups ;  smoking  queer  tobacco  with  my  queer,  newly 
found  friends. 

I  had  sat  on  the  chairs  of  Shephard's  veranda  for 
hours  together,  watching  that  wonderful  and  unfail 
ingly  delightful  procession  of  donkeys  and  camels  and 
tea-carts  and  dromedaries  and  artillery  caissons  and 
litters  and  saises  and  sheiks  and  snake-charmers  and 
Arab  hawkers  and  guides  and  dragomen  and  kilted 
Highland  privates  and  red-coated  British  officers  and 
English  and  American  ladies  in  Parisian  gowns  and 
Arab  women  with  veiled  faces  and  half-naked  babies 


Demanbs  of  tbe  1kbeM\>e       251 

and  all  the  picturesque  paraphernalia,  local  and  per 
sonal,  of  that  ancient  city.  It  appeared  to  me  to  be 
the  realisation  of  an  Arabian  Night' s  dream  added  to  a 
stray  chapter  or  two  out  of  the  Old,  or  the  New,  Testa 
ment  ;  and  I  did  not  know  whether  I  was  asleep  or 
awake.  One  fine  morning,  and  nearly  all  mornings 
are  fine  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  on  my  way  from 
Cairo  to  the  Second  Cataract,  there  came  to  me  an 
official  notification  on  a  dromedary  that  the  Khedive's 
Minister  of  War,  unsolicited  by  me,  would  grant  me 
an  interview  at  five  of  the  clock  the  next  afternoon. 

This,  I  said  to  myself  and  to  my  wife,  is  fame.  My 
reputation  has  preceded  me.  It  has  won  for  me  recog 
nition  these  thousands  of  miles  away.  And  it  had  ! 
The  Minister  of  War  of  the  Khedive,  very  black  with 
one  eye  only  and  pock-marked,  received  me  in  the  War 
Office  to  which  I  went  in  an  Anglicised  cab,  not  on 
foot  or  on  donkey-back,  as  was  my  usual  mode  of  pro 
cedure.  He  presented  me  to  a  lady  whom  I  assumed 
to  be  his  First  Wife  but  who  was  not — a  lady  as  pock 
marked,  as  one-eyed,  and  as  black  as  he  was  ;  he  spoke 
to  me  most  graciously,  in  pretty  poor  Knglish  and  in 
very  good  French, — of  both  languages  his  First  Wife 
was  entirely  ignorant.  He  gave  me  some  very  decent 
five-o'clock  tea,  which  I  never  drink.  And  then  he  in 
formed  me  that  he  had  sent  for  me,  not  because  I  was 
a  distinguished  visitor  to  Hgypt's  coral  strand,  but  be 
cause  he  had  read  a  paper  of  mine  in  Harper3*  Magazine 
upon  the  "  Negro  Minstrel  on  the  American  Stage," 


252  Galfcs  in  a  library 

and  because  he  himself  had  made  a  study  of  the 
aboriginal  music  of  his  own  country.  He  had  written, 
in  French,  an  exhaustive  paper  upon  the  subject  which 
he  wished  me  to  have  properly  translated  and  promptly 
published  in  the  periodical  of  which,  as  he  thought, 
and  as  he  expressed  it,  I  was  the  Literary  Minister  of 
the  banjo  and  bones!  Two  short  "poems"  of  mine, 
perpetrated  at  Shephard's  Hotel,  where  they  had  won 
some  little  popularity  because  of  their  purely  local 
flavour,  I  thought  might,  perhaps,  have  attracted  the 
favourable  attention  of  the  noble  member  of  the  Khe 
dive's  Cabinet,  who  consequently  wished  to  meet  and 
to  thank  their,  author.  I  had  heard  dragomen  recite 
them  in  the  streets  and  it  was  not  impossible  that  they 
had  found  their  way  into  court  circles.  They  were  the 
only  examples  of  original  literary  composition  coming 
within  my  knowledge  during  that  twelvemonth,  which 
were  not  sent  to  Mr.  Alden  ;  but  it  may  not  be  amiss 
to  set  them  down  here: 

I  bought  a  scarib, 

From  an  Arab, 

Who  was  dressed  up  like  a  sheik  ; 

And  was  willing, 

For  a  shilling, 

To  declare  it  "real  antique." 


A  ring  with  a  ruby  in, 

Bought  I  of  a  Nubian, 

Who  was  ready  to  swear  to  its  real  ancient  date 

But  ways  that  are  Nubious 

Are  apt  to  be  dubious — 

The  ruby  's  a  bead,  and  the  setting  tin-plate ! 


typographical  iBrrors         253 

Still  another  of  the  trials  of  the  author  is  the  type 
setter,  as  he  is  backed  and  supported  by  the  proof 
reader.  It  sometimes  seems  as  if  they  must  do  it  on 
purpose,  for  many  of  their  mistakes  are  too  ingenious 
to  be  accidental.  An  entire  volume  might  be  filled 
with  the  stories  of  typographical  errors  and  it  would  be 
entertaining  if  not  instructive  reading.  A  number  of 
these,  as  happening  to  me  or  as  coming  within  my  ken, 
may  be  worth  repeating  here.  The  first  befell  Mr. 
Brander  Matthews.  He  wrote  of  a  certain  collection 
of  short  stories,  translated  from  the  French,  that  they 
suggested  in  a  way  The  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn ;  he 
found  himself  put  into  print  as  declaring  that  they  sug 
gested  "the  tail  of  a  wayside  hen  !  " 

I  was  made  to  speak  once,  in  print,  of  "  the  manures 
and  customs  of  the  Mexicans."  Their  manners  may 
be  unpleasant.  But  I  did  not  mean  to  express  it  in 
that  blunt  way. 

In  reviewing  a  book  about  the  British  Parliament,  I 
wrote  that  "the  most  interesting  and  comprehensive 
chapter,  perhaps,  was  that  which  gives  the  history  of 
I/ord  Palmerston's  career!"  The  final  word  of  the 
sentence  was  printed  cancer,  passing  proof-reader  and 
writer  both  ;  and  so  standing,  in  the  back  pages  of  a 
copy  of  Harper's  Magazine,  to  this  day.  It  was  the 
subject  of  much  facetious  comment  in  the  editorial 
pages  of  a  leading  journal  at  the  time  ;  the  editor,  in  a 
perfectly  kindly  and  good-humoured  sort  of  manner, 
having  great  fun  at  my  expense  and  commenting  freely 


254  Galfcs  in  a  Hibrar? 

upon  my  familiarity  with  that  peculiar  disease,  particu 
larly  as  it  was  developed  in  the  case  of  Lord  Palrner- 
ston.  All  of  which  I  enjoyed  as  much  as  the  editor  did. 
The  editor  is  still  my  good  friend  ;  but  my  name,  by 
strict  orders,  has  never  been  mentioned  in  the  journal 
in  question  since  I  said  once  of  its  publisher  and  pro 
prietor  that  he  could  afford  to  keep  house  upon  his  pro 
fessional  income  because  (unless  he  dined  out)  his  living 
was  not  high  and  he  burned  his  own  natural  gas  !  The 
fault  of  this  remark  could  not  possibly  be  laid  at  the 
door  of  the  composing-room  and  I  have  never  been 
forgiven  for  it.  I  am  not  criticised  in  his  columns,  I 
am  not  condemned  or  abused  ;  I  am  invariably  and 
absolutely  and  entirely  ignored.  And  I  have  never 
explained  that  the  remark,  although  it  got  into  print, 
I  did  not  intend  of  course  to  be  printed. 

The  most  perplexing  and  absurd  of  these  typograph 
ical  errors  tried  to  find  its  way  into  the  columns  of 
Harpers  Weekly  but  fortunately  was  captured.  At. 
the  time  of  the  union  of  the  Astor,  Lenox,  and  Tilden 
Libraries,  I  wrote  a  long  and  hurried  paper  of  sev 
eral  columns  concerning  the  three  institutions  and 
their  founders.  The  journal  was  to  go  to  press  early 
on  Saturday  and  the  article  was  not  finished  until  very 
late  on  Friday  night.  The  messenger-boy  took  it  to 
Franklin  Square  the  next  morning  before  I  was  awake, 
and  by  the  time  of  my  arrival  at  the  editorial-rooms, 
the  long,  wet  galley-proofs,  unseen  as  yet  by  profes 
sional  proof-readers,  were  ready  for  my  inspection. 


"IDest  Buttons"  255 

Printed  on  different  presses  and  in  different  rooms, 
they  came  down  to  me  naturally  in  an  irregular  way, 
without  sequence,  without  head  or  tail.  I  skipped 
from  paragraph  to  paragraph,  from  subject  to  subject, 
in  a  most  confusing  manner,  the  printer' s-devil  stand 
ing  impatiently  at  my  elbow,  the  typesetters  crying 
for  "  revise";  and  all  went  swimmingly  along  until  I 
came  to  the  following  remarkable  sentence  :  ' '  New 
York,  perhaps,  has  never  fully  realised  until  this  day 
how  greatly  it  has  been  enriched  by  the  receipt  of  the 
vest  buttons  of  James  L,enox  ! ' ' 

Why  ' '  vest  buttons "  ?  I  had  no  recollections  of 
writing  anything  about  Mr.  L,enox's  "vest  buttons"  or 
about  any  buttons  of  any  sort  belonging  to  Mr.  L,enox 
or  to  his  library.  And  I  could  not  remember,  in  the 
haste  of  composition,  what  I  had  written.  But  I  cer 
tainly  had  not  mentioned  "  vest  buttons,"  which  could, 
in  no  possibility,  have  any  connection  with  the  subject 
in  hand.  At  last  in  despair  I  sent  for  "copy,"  when  it 
was  discovered  that  Mr.  I^enox's  "  vest  buttons"  were 
the  '  *  vast  bequests ' '  of  that  generous,  public- spirited 
gentleman  ! 

But  still  I  ask,  why  "  vest  buttons"? 

Even  since  I  have  been  at  Princeton,  I  have  found 
myself  quoted  as  picking  up  many  "  earnest  persons" 
instead  of  "  honest  pennies"  ;  as  taking  a  "  dog "  in 
stead  of  a  "day"  out  of  my  vacation;  as  being  possessed 
of  a  coach  and  four  and  ' '  a  gold  gallows ' '  instead  of 
"gold galore"  ;  as  "aiming from  the  train  "  instead  of 


256  {Talks  in  a  Uibrarp 

"arriving  on  the  train"  ;  as  "arranging  myself"  in 
stead  of  "arraying  myself"  in  a  golf- suit ;  as  driving 
and  putting  "gold  balls"  instead  of  "golf  balls"  ;  as 
making  my  cook  "garbage"  instead  of  "garnish"  the 
dish  with  parsley  ;  as  making  my  dairy-maid  "charm 
the  butler"  when  her  business  was  to  "churn  the 
butter"  ;  and  finally,  as  speaking  of  a  friend  as  being 
"slightly  dead"  instead  of  "slightly  deaf" 

Many  " earnest  persons  "  in  Princeton  have  witnessed 
these  typographical  contortions  of  mine  and  will  vouch 
for  the  fact  that  they  are  not  invented  for  the  occasion. 

I  can  understand  the  dairy-maid  as  being  willing  and 
ready  to  "charm  the  butler";  but  again  I  ask — why 
"  vest  buttons"? 

One  of  the  most  serious  of  all  the  trials  of  an  author 
is  the  selection  of  the  proper  and  the  ' '  taking ' '  title  for 
an  article  or  a  book.  Plays,  Players,  and  Play-Houses 
is  the  sub-title  of  Doran's  Annals  of  the  English  Stage. 
Upon  this  hint  I  let  my  '  prenticework  speak  ;  and  its 
name,  I  am  sure,  helped  the  sale  of  Plays  and  Players, 
and  struck  the  public  eye  and  interest.  The  Literary 
Landmarks  of  London  appealed  to  me  because  of  its 
alliterative  latitude  and  the  series  of  "  literary  Land 
marks"  naturally  followed.  The  Curiosities  of  the 
American  Stage  was  an  accident.  It  was  so  named 
because  it  was  to  be  the  companion-volume  to  a  series 
.of  papers  which  I  intended  to  call  "  The  Curiosities  of 
Books";  but  it  appeared  before  "The  Curiosities  of 
Books  "—which  never  appeared  at  all !  The  "  Book  " 


ILibris"  257 


papers  were  split  up  into  two  little  books,  companions 
to  each  other,  and  known  as  From  the  Books  of  Lau 
rence  Hutton  and  Other  Times  and  Other  Seasons. 
The  name  of  the  latter  of  these  expresses,  fairly  well, 
its  contents,  a  collection  of  papers  upon  Golf,  April- 
Fooling,  Tennis,  Christmas  Pastimes,  Foot-ball,  The 
Feast  of  St.  Valentine,  Boat  Races,  and  the  like,  as 
they  were  evolved  and  existed  in  the  days  gone  by  ; 
but  the  former  is  a  mistake  and  a  misnomer.  The 
volume  opens  with  a  chapter  upon  "  American  Book- 
Plates" — Ex  Libris — the  parent-article,  by  the  way, 
of  a  subject  which  has  since  developed  a  library  of  its 
own, — and  it  is  devoted  to  what  I  considered  at  the  time 
were  the  out-of-the-ordinary,  and  the  interesting  things, 
personal  and  otherwise,  which  were  contained  in  the 
books  in  my  own  possession, — "  Poetical  Inscriptions," 
"  Personal  Inscriptions,"  "  Poetical  Dedications,"  and 
the  like.  I  intended  its  title  to  be  "Ex  Libris,  Laurence 
Hutton,"  but  I  was  told  that  very  few  persons  knew 
what  Ex  Libris  meant  and  that  a  book  under  a  foreign 
name  or  an  unfamiliar  name  is  a  dangerous  experi 
ment — this  was  long  before  the  days  of  the  great  suc 
cess  of  Quo  Vadis — so  I  put  my  Ex  Libris  into  literal 
English,  and  called  it  From  the  Books  of  Laurence  Hut- 
ton,  thereby  misleading  those  who  never  read  it — and 
they,  naturally,  are  very,  very  many — into  the  idea  that 
its  contents  are '  *  from  the  books' '  I  myself  have  written, 
not  * '  from  the  books ' '  of  other  and  better  men  which 
I  chanced  to  own  or  to  have  known.  And  the  author  is 


258  Galfce  in  a  library 

still  regarded  by  press,  by  public,  and  by  personal 
friends,  as  one  of  the  most  self-conscious  and  the  most 
self-advertising  of  men. 

Portraits  in  Plaster  was  an  inspiration.  The  articles 
upon  which  the  volume  was  based  had  appeared  in 
Harper  s  Magazine  as  "A  Collection  of  Death  Masks," 
notwithstanding  the  fact  that  a  number  of  them  are 
masks  from  nature — before  death.  ' '  A  Collection  of 
Masks  from  lyife  and  Death"  was  considered  too  long 
and  too  cumbersome  even  for  a  quarto  or  a  folio,  and 
it  would  not  have  been  what  is  termed  ' '  taking ' '  or 
easy  of  notice.  For  many  months,  therefore,  a  better 
name  was  earnestly  looked  for.  Mr.  Stedrnan,  Mr. 
Warner,  Mr.  Matthews,  and  Mr.  Bunner  were  asked 
their  advice  ;  and  many  and  kindly  were  the  titles  sug 
gested — as,  "  Masks  and  Faces,"  by  Mr.  Warner,  but 
that  had  been  pre-empted  by  Charles  Reade  and  Dion 
Boucicault  in  their  famous  comedy,  already  printed 
and  copyrighted  in  book  form  ;  Bunner  gave  me  * '  Old 
Mortality's  Matrix";  Mr.  Stedman,  "  The  New  Mask 
of  Death";  Mr.  Matthews,  "The  Mask  of  Fashion 
and  the  Mould  of  Form  ";  and  others  of  my  literary 
friends  gave  me  other  titles  equally  happy,  but,  so  it 
seemed  to  the  publishers,  equally  impossible.  ' '  The 
New  Mask  of  Death  ' '  pleased  me  best ;  but  I  was  told 
that  the  general  reader  would  not  read  about  death  in 
any  shape  or  in  any  form  if  he  could  help  it ;  and  that 
had  to  be  set  aside. 

The  work  was  in  print,  in  galley-proofs,  announced 


LAURENCE  MUTTON'S  BOOK-PLATE 


titles  259 


as  "  forthcoming,"  before  it  had  a  name  at  all.  When 
a  name  was  absolutely  necessary,  the  matter  was  laid 
before  Mr.  J.  Henry  Harper,  who,  without  seeming  to 
give  it  any  particular  thought,  said:  "  They  are  all 
plaster  casts,  ar'  n't  they?  And  they  are  all  portraits, 
ar'n't  they?  You  like  alliterative  titles,  don't  you? 
What  is  the  matter  with  'Portraits  in  Plaster'?" 
And  Portraits  in  Plaster  it  was  and  is. 

A  good  title  is  so  essential  that  men  have  been  known 
to  copyright  titles  and  then,  some  day  perhaps,  to  write 
books  to  fit  them.  The  nomenclature  of  fiction  does 
not  seem  to  be  so  difficult  as  is  that  of  more  serious 
works.  It  is  easy  to  name  a  novel  after  its  hero,  as 
David  Copperjield,  or  after  its  heroine,  as  Anna  Kare- 
nina,  or  after  a  place,  as  The  Exiles  of  Siberia,  or  after 
an  incident,  as  A  Terrible  Temptation,  or  after  some 
personal  characteristic,  as  The  Woman  in  White  or  The 
Man  Who  Was.  Shakespeare,  happy  in  everything, 
was  happy  in  his  titles,  as  The  Comedy  of  Errors  and 
As  You  Like  It ;  and  Mr.  Howells  has  found  happy 
titles  in  Shakespeare's  phrases,  as  A  Foregone  Con 
clusion,  A  Woman* s  Reason,  and  A  Chance  Acquaintance. 
The  simplest  thing  of  all  is  some  familiar  quotation  or 
striking  line  from  prose  or  verse.  Ships  that  Pass  in 
the  Night  did  not  a  little  popularise  a  one-time  popular 
story,  and  Red  as  a  Rose  is  She  and  Cometh  Up  as  a 
Flower  were  titles  not  without  good  effect  upon  the 
novel-reading  mind. 

Next  to   Vanity  Fair,  the  happiest  title  of  the  last 


260  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

century,  perhaps,  is  borne  by  a  volume  not  so  generally 
known  as  it  ought  to  be,  and  written  by  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes.  A  number  of  his  clever  essays,  contributed 
from  time  to  time  to  a  famous  magazine  of  Boston, 
were  gathered  together  and  given  to  the  world  as 
Soundings  from  the  Atlantic.  The  play  upon  words  is 
worthy  of  the  gentle  monologist  of  the  Breakfast-Table; 
but  some  of  those  carping  local  critics  of  his  who  were 
fond  of  telling  us  that  "  Wendell  Holmes  was  not  half 
so  bright  and  witty  as  was  his  brother  John,"  went  so 
far  as  to  say  that  the  Autocrat  gave  The  Atlantic  its 
name  for  the  sake  of  having  a  good  name  for  his  book  ! 


CHAPTER  X 

The  American  Actor  Series — Literary  Landmarks  of  London — 
Colley  Gibber— The  Grave  of  Charles  Lamb— Joanna  Baillie 
— Butler — Boswell — The  False  Making  of  History— Com 
parative  Rates  Paid  to  Authors  and  Illustrators — Literary 
Landmarks  of  Edinburgh— -Sir  Walter  Scott  —  Dr.  John 
Brown. 

AFTKR  the  fireplace-heater  episode,  and  after  the 
Mail  was  married  to  the  Express — a  happy  union  for 
both  of  them, —  and  after  the  Arcadian  died  a  very 
natural  death  indeed,  I  had  but  little  connection  with 
periodical  literature  until  I  went  to  the  Harpers  after 
my  marriage  in  1885.  I  devoted  most  of  my  working 
hours  to  the  writing,  to  the  compiling,  and  to  the  edit 
ing  of  books,  with  a  decently  fair  consideration  of  profit 
in  the  way  of  royalties — semi-annually  and  regularly 
paid.  With  Mrs.  Clara  Erskine  Clement,  author  of 
the  Handbook  of  Legendary  and  Mythological  Art  —  a 
book  familiarly  and  disrespectfully  known  to  the  trade 
as  "Leg.  Art," — I  made  two  large  volumes  entitled 
Artists  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  published  in  1879. 
My  partner  contributed  the  biographies  of  the  Conti 
nental  painters,  architects,  sculptors,  and  engravers 
who  have  figured  in  the  annals  of  art  since  1800.  I 

36* 


262  ftalfce  in  a 


devoted  myself  to  the  exploiting  of  the  productions  of 
the  men  in  similar  lines  who  were  of  British  and 
American  birth.  We  collected  a  vast  amount  of  in 
formation,  which  seems  to  have  been  valuable,  for  it 
still  brings  us  in  —  at  the  end  of  these  twenty  years  —  a 
very  comfortable  and  pleasant  sum  per  annum. 

In  1881-82  I  edited  the  "  American  Actor  Series  "  for 
James  R.  Osgood  &  Company,  in  six  volumes.  [These 
were  written  by  Kate  Field  (Fechter),  William  Winter 
(The  Jeffersons),  Mrs.  Asia  Booth  Clarke  (The  Elder 
and  the  Younger  Bootli),  Z,awrence  Barrett  (Forrest)  , 
Joseph  N.  Inland  (Mrs.  Duff),  and  Mrs.  Clara  Krskiue 
Clement  (Charlotte  Cushman\~] 

In  the  summer  of  1882  I  began  the  construction 
of  The  Literary  Landmarks  of  London,  the  only  work 
of  any  lasting  worth  with  which  my  name  is  to  be 
associated.  It  is  not  valuable  as  literature,  for  it  is  not 
literature  and  it  does  not  pretend  to  be  literature.  It  is 
likely  to  be  respectable  and  enduring  only  on  account 
of  the  vast  amount  of  original  matter  it  contains,  relat 
ing  to  the  homes  and  to  the  haunts  of  the  British  men 
of  letters  in  the  great  British  metropolis  ;  and  its  main 
value  consists  in  its  correction  of  the  many  topographi 
cal  errors  made  by  less  careful  and  less  diligent  com 
pilers.  The  story  of  its  origin  and  conception,  and  of 
its  construction,  may  be  worth  the  telling  here. 

One  pleasant  day,  a  memorable  day  to  me,  I  went  to 
Stoke  Pogis,  acting  as  guide  to  a  party  consisting  of  Mr. 
William  Winter,  Mr.  Howells,  Mr.  L,awrence  Barrett, 


Xanbmarfcs          263 


and  Mr.  Charles  Dudley  Warner.  We  spent  many 
hours  in  the  old  churchyard  immortalised  in  the  Elegy, 
and  containing  Gray's  grave  ;  and  I  remember  the 
effect  upon  us  all  of  Gray's  touching  epitaph  upon  the 
tomb  containing  his  mother's  ashes.  I  had  lost  my 
own  mother  a  few  months  before,  dearly  loved  by  the 
men  who  were  with  me.  And  we  all  felt  the  affecting 
significance  of  the  affectionate  words.  Barrett's  voice 
broke  entirely  as  he  tried  to  read  them  aloud  ;  and 
WTinter  finished  the  lines,  "  Sacred  to  the  memory  of 
the  devoted  mother  of  seven  children,  one  of  whom 
alone  had  the  misfortune  to  survive  her  !  " 

On  our  return  to  London  late  in  the  afternoon,  I 
suggested,  in  order  not  to  separate  the  party  —  we  were 
to  dine  with  James  R.  Osgood  that  night  at  the  Cri 
terion  —  that  we  mount  a  'bus  and  all  ride  together. 
We  passed,  on  the  way,  a  number  of  memorable  houses 
that  I  pointed  out  as  we  went  by,  telling  the  story  of 
their  literary  association.  When  we  stopped  for  a 
moment  at  the  corner  of  St.  James's  Street  and  Picca 
dilly,  I  said  :  "  Do  you  see  that  red  lamp  in  front  of  the 
chemist's  shop,  a  block  or  so  before  you  ?  In  the  room 
over  that  shop  Byron  woke  up  one  morning  to  find 
himself  famous  !  '  '  Without  a  word  and  with  one  ac 
cord  they  left  the  omnibus,  hot,  tired,  hungry,  dusty 
as  they  were,  and  stood  in  front  of  the  dingy,  little, 
commonplace  tenement,  unmarked  by  tablet,  which  is 
certainly  one  of  the  most  interesting  of  all  the  literary 
landmarks  in  the  literary  capital  of  the  world.  On 


264  Galfcs  in  a  library 

the  way  back  to  Piccadilly  and  to  dinner,  Mr.  Howells, 
Mr.  Warner,  and  I  chanced  to  walk  together.  They 
took  my  arms  and  said  to  me:  "  You  know  more  about 
these  things  than  any  man  alive.  Why  don't  you  put 
on  imperishable  record  what  you  know  and  what  all 
the  rest  of  us  want  to  be  told  ?  You  are  alone  here  and 
in  the  world.  You  are  passing  through  the  greatest 
sorrow  of  your  life.  You  need  something  to  occupy 
your  mind  and  to  take  yourself  out  of  yourself.  Write 
a  book  about  London,  and  about  its  associations  with 
all  its  men  of  letters,  and  you  will  be  the  happier  for  it, 
and  do  the  world  some  service.''  They  probably  never 
thought  of  the  words  again.  But  during  the  evening 
I  thought  of  nothing  else  ;  and  before  I  fell  asleep  that 
aight  I  had  laid  out,  in  my  own  mind,  the  plan  of  the 
work.  I  had  been  making  my  researches  for  years, 
but  only  for  my  own  edification  and  for  my  own  pleas 
ure,  with  no  thought  of  the  pleasure  or  the  edification 
of  anybody  else. 

The  story  of  the  writing  of  that  book  would  make  a 
book  as  long  as  the  book  itself.  I  devoted  three  win 
ters  in  New  York  to  the  gathering  of  my  materials ; 
reading  and  consulting  my  own  library  of  guides  to 
London,  and  thousands  of  biographies,  autobiographies, 
reminiscences,  and  volumes  of  correspondence.  Every 
house  in  which  a  British  author  had  lived  in  London, 
every  tavern  he  had  frequented,  every  club  to  which  he 
had  belonged,  every  spot  familiar  to  him,  was  noted  ; 
the  where,  and  the  when,  and  the  how  ;  the  church  in 


IResearcb  in  Xonbon          265 

which  he  was  christened  or  married,  or  from  which, 
or  in  which,  he  was  buried  ;  his  tomb  and  his  tene 
ment.  And  I  devoted  three  summers  in  London  to  the 
verification  of  what  I  had  read  at  home,  and  to  actual 
inspection  of  every  spot  I  have  mentioned  in  my  text. 
Houses  and  churches  and  taverns  had  disappeared,  and 
had  left  no  signs ;  the  guide-books  differed,  or  were 
silent,  as  to  their  sites ;  streets  had  been  renamed  and 
renumbered,  shortened  or  lengthened,  or  wiped  out  of 
existence  altogether ;  and  the  confusion  sometimes 
seemed  insurmountable.  Happily  I  discovered,  in  the 
reading-room  of  the  British  Museum,  the  first  official 
insurance  survey  of  the  metropolis.  It  was  made 
during  the  i8th  century  and  it  contains  the  shape,  and 
size,  and  exact  position  of  the  ground-plan  of  every 
house  then  standing  in  London  and  Westminster ;  and 
best  of  all,  it  has  the  original  street  numbers  of  each 
building.  This  to  me  was  an  indispensable ' '  find'  * ;  and 
that  night,  I  remember,  I  did  not  sleep  at  all.  I  was  per 
mitted  by  the  authorities  to  make  tracings  of  this  map  ; 
it  has  a  correct  scale  of  inches  to  the  mile ;  and  by 
actual  comparison  with  contemporary  maps  made  to 
the  same  scale,  and  by  pacing  the  streets  themselves, 
I  was  able  in  all  doubtful  cases  to  come  to  very  satis 
factory  conclusions  and  to  prove,  in  many  instances, 
that  my  own  previous  conclusions  and  the  conclusions 
of  other  investigators  were  entirely  wrong. 

Colley  Gibber,   for  instance,   according  to  his  own 
statement,  ' '  was  born  in  Southampton  Street,  facing 


266  £alhs  in  a  Xibrar? 

Southampton  House."  But  there  were  two  Southamp 
ton  Streets  and  two  Southampton  Houses  !  The  earlier 
Southampton  House  was  taken  down  some  twenty 
years  before  the  date  of  Cibber's  birth.  The  latter, 
standing  until  the  beginning  of  the  last  century,  was 
on  the  north  side  of  Bloomsbury  Square,  facing  South 
ampton  Street,  Bloomsbury ;  and  Gibber,  therefore, 
first  saw  the  light  in  that  Southampton  Street ;  not  in 
Southampton  Street,  Strand,  as  was  universally  accep 
ted  by  guide-books  and  biographers. 

The  place  of  Cibber's  burial  was  a  greater  mystery 
still.  It  was  generally  supposed  that  he  wras  laid  in 
the  cloisters  of  Westminster  Abbey,  by  the  side  of  his 
wife ;  but  the  records  of  the  Abbey  are  entirely  silent 
upon  the  subject.  I  discovered  that  he  had  not  died 
in  Islington,  as  some  authorities  declared  ;  and  a  care 
ful  search  through  the  files  of  contemporary  periodi 
cals,  in  the  never-failing  reading-room  of  the  British 
Museum,  gave  me  no  account  of  his  death  or  of  his 
grave.  That  Caius  Gabriel  Gibber  and  his  wife  were 
buried  in  the  vaults  of  the  Danish  church,  Wellclose 
Square,  RatclifFe  Highway,  was  an  established  fact ; 
and  it  might  be  that  the  bones  of  the  Poet  Laureate 
were  placed  there  by  the  side  of  those  of  his  father  and 
his  mother.  So  I  decided  to  go  to  see  the  Danish 
church.  Here  I  met  with  three  great  obstacles.  There 
was,  in  1884,  no  Ratcliffe  Highway,  no  Wellclose 
Square,  no  Danish  church!  Ratcliffe  Highway,  it  was 
remembered,  was  once  the  name  of  the  present  St. 


Difficulties  of  IResearcb        267 

George's  Street ;  but  nobody  remembered  Wellclose 
Square.  Policemen,  postmen,  oldest  inhabitant,  knew 
nothing  about  it ;  and  nobody  had  ever  heard  of  a 
Danish  church.  At  last  I  found  an  aged  resident  who 
thought  it  might  be  the  Swedish  church,  Princess 
Square  ;  and  thither  I  went.  It  was  an  autumn  Sun 
day  afternoon,  and  I  entered  to  attend  the  service  and 
to  look  about  me.  The  congregation,  consisting  of 
Swedish  sailors,  was  very  small  and  the  exercises  were 
in  the  Swedish  language.  A  few  tablets  on  the  walls 
attracted  my  attention;  and  one,  over  the  pew  in  which 
I  sat,  startled  me  not  a  little.  Its  inscription  is  to  the 
effect  that  "  Near  this  spot  was  interred  the  mortal  part 
of  Hmanuel  Swedenborg ' ' !  This  was  a  discovery  in 
deed,  a  literary  landmark  worth  finding;  and  it  opened 
up  to  me  a  new  field  of  research. 

After  the  service  I  spoke  to  the  Swedish  chaplain, 
who  told  me  that  his  church  had  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  the  Danish  church,  and  had  never  had  ;  that 
the  Danish  church  had  disappeared  with  Wellclose 
Square,  and  that  a  certain  board-school,  in  the  present 
St.  George's  Street,  now  stood  on  their  site.  His  sex 
ton,  however,  was  the  son  of  the  old  sexton  of  the 
Danish  church,  and  could,  perhaps,  give  me  the  in 
formation  I  sought.  This  sexton,  a  middle-aged  man, 
knew  nothing,  of  course ;  but  he  volunteered  to  take 
me  to  his  father  on  Tower  Hill.  And  to  Tower  Hill 
we  wended  our  way.  The  elder  Dane  was  very  old. 
He  was  a  shoemaker,  using  as  his  workshop  the  body 


268  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

of  a  dismantled  four-wheeled  cab,  which  sat  in  a  little 
front  garden  by  his  own  front-door.  The  establishment 
was  painted  a  bright  green,  and  the  top  and  the  driver's 
seat  were  filled  with  growing  plants.  I  explained  my 
business  to  the  ex-sexton,  present-cobbler,  who  gave  me 
a  cup  of  tea  and  asked  me  if  I  were  acquainted  with  a 
brother  of  his  living  in  Mobile,  Alabama.  But  he 
knew  nothing  about  the  Gibbers,  had  never  heard 
their  name.  He  referred  me,  however,  to  Rev.  Dr. 
Greatorex,  Rector  of  St.  Paul's  Church,  Tower  Hill, 
who  had  been  the  rector  of  the  Danish  church.  And 
at  the  end  of  Dr.  Greatorex' s  evening  service,  I  got 
from  him  the  whole  story.  When  the  chapel  was 
doomed,  he,  with  the  Danish  Consul,  had  removed 
the  bodies  of  the  Gibbers,  father,  mother,  and  son,  with 
his  own  hands,  had  read  the  coffin-plates,  and  had 
placed  the  fragmentary  bits  of  bone  in  a  vault 
under  the  chapel  of  the  then  new  board-school.  And 
so,  for  the  first  time  in  more  than  a  century — Gibber 
died  in  1752 — the  matter  was  settled.  And  all  later 
biographers  have  generously  given  me  the  credit  for 
the  "find." 

Another  Sunday  afternoon  I  devoted  to  a  pious  pil 
grimage  to  the  grave  of  Charles  Lamb,  at  Edmonton. 
As  usual,  nobody  at  Edmonton  knew  anything.  The 
churchyard  is  not  a  small  one,  and  it  is  entirely  filled. 
The  sexton,  and  the  grave-digger,  and  a  few  persons 
wandering  about  could  give  me  no  information.  Most 
of  them  had  never  heard  of ' '  Mr.  I,ainb ' ' ;  and  I  could 


Bdtisb  UnMfference  269 

not  find  the  sacred  spot.  Naturally,  I  applied  to  the 
rector ;  and,  as  he  left  the  vestry-door,  after  service, 
leaning  on  the  arm  of  a  pretty  young  woman,  I  ap 
proached  him,  raised  my  hat,  and  asked  politely,  if  he 
could  tell  me  where  Charles  and  Mary  L,amb  were 
resting  ?  Really,  he  could  not  say!  And  I,  forgetting 
the  day,  the  place,  and  his  sacred  office,  cursed  that 
rector  for  his  criminal  ignorance.  "  Great  Heavens  !  " 
I  said,  ' '  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself.  In 
your  care  have  been  placed  the  ashes  of  one  of  the 
foremost  men  in  the  whole  history  of  Knglish  letters. 
And  you  don't  know  where  they  are  !  They  have 
made  your  churchyard  and  your  parish  distinguished 
all  the  world  over.  I  have  come  three  thousand  miles 
to  visit  Charles  I^amb's  grave,  and  you,  the  rector  of 
the  church,  don't  know  where  it  is  !  You  ought  to  be 
heartily  ashamed  of  yourself."  And  I  turned  upon  my 
heel  and  left  him  standing  there,  speechless  and 
confounded. 

Never  before,  perhaps,  since  the  days  of  Cromwell, 
was  Knglish  priest  so  spoken  to  at  the  porch  of  his  own 
church.  Half  an  hour  later,  while  I  was  still  groping 
about  in  the  twilight,  stumbling  over  the  mounds  in 
which  the  rude  forefathers  of  the  hamlet  sleep,  search 
ing  in  vain  for  the  resting-place  upon  the  lap  of  earth 
of  one  poor  youth  unknown  to  fortune  but  well  known 
to  fame,  the  rector  approached  me,  took  off  his  hat,  and 
said, <(  I  am  heartily  ashamed  of  myself;  and  if  you  will 
step  this  way,  I  will  show  you  what  you  have  come  so 


270  tlalfts  in  a  library 

far  to  see.  Let  me  assure  you  that  no  one  will  ever 
accuse  me  of  such  ignorance  again." 

A  well-dressed,  intelligent-looking  lady,  who  might 
have  been  a  rector's  wife,  was  equally  confused  as  to 
the  grave  of,  and  even  as  to  the  existence  of,  Joanna 
Baillie.  It  is  an  established  fact  that  the  venerable 
lady  had  lived  for  a  long  time,  and  had  died  in  the 
early  fifties  full  of  years  and  of  honour  at  Hampstead. 
Her  house,  an  old-fashioned,  picturesque  mansion, 
still  stood  in  1885  and  no  doubt  is  still  standing  on  the 
top  of  Windmill  Hill,  opposite  the  Holly  Bush  Inn, 
easily  discovered  and  readily  identified.  But  her  pres 
ent  resting-place,  among  the  many  mouldering  heaps 
in  the  crowded  churchyard,  could  not  be  found.  The 
supposed  rector's  wife,  working  over  a  carefully  kept 
little  plot  of  her  own,  was  finally  accosted.  The  case 
was  stated  as  politely  as  possible,  and  I  was  assured 
with  equal  politeness  and  to  my  no  little  amazement, 
that  "Joanna"  was  still  living,  doing  "char- work"  in 
the  village,  and  lodging  with  her  granddaughter  in  the 
rear  portion  of  a  High  Street  tenement.  It  was  ex 
plained  that  another  and  more  widely  known  Joanna 
Baillie,  who  had  been  the  intimate  friend  of  Words 
worth,  and  of  Samuel  Rogers,  and  the  other  giants  of 
her  time,  was  referred  to.  But  it  appeared  that  the 
great  Joanna  must  have  died  before  my  informant  had 
come  to  the  neighbourhood,  for  she  had  never  heard  of 
her. 

Another  difficulty  met  with  and  never  finally  over- 


of  (Sutoe^boofee        271 


come,  was  the  establishment  of  the  birthplace  of  the 
younger  Disraeli,  variously  stated  in  the  different  biog 
raphies  as  being  at  Hackney  in  the  Adelphi  ;  at  St. 
Mary  Axe  (pronounced  "  Simmery  Axe  ");  in  Trinity 
Row,  Islington  ;  in  King's  Road  ;  and  in  Bloomsbury 
Square.  It  was  a  matter  of  some  confusion,  evidently, 
to  Disraeli  himself,  for  he  told  one  friend  that  he  first 
saw  the  light  in  a  library  in  the  Adelphi,  in  L,ondon  ; 
and  his  intimate,  Montague  Corry,  afterwards  Lord 
Rowton,  once  informed  S.  C.  Hall  that  he  had  gone 
with  Disraeli  late  in  his  life  to  the  mansion  now  num 
bered  6  Bloomsbury  Square,  where  the  Primrose 
Sphinx  had  sat  for  some  time,  in  deep  meditation,  in 
the  room  in  which  he  was  born.  But  the  parish  rate 
books,  most  carefully  examined  by  me,  prove  that  the 
family  did  not  take  possession  of  this  house  until  1817, 
when  Benjamin  was  at  least  twelve  years  of  age.  The 
name  Disraeli  does  not  appear  in  the  L,ondon  directory 
for  1804,  when  Benjamin  was  born  ;  and  so  the  mystery 
is  still  unsolved.  All  this  research,  naturally,  occupied 
a  great  deal  of  time  and  study  although  the  result,  or 
the  lack  of  result,  is  dismissed  in  the  book  in  a  few 
short  lines.  It  was  a  most  interesting  study  while  it 
lasted,  however  ;  as  entertaining  to  me  as  the  working 
out  of  a  riddle  or  the  solving  of  an  enigma. 

Curious  was  it  to  trace  the  workings  of  the  minds  of 
the  makers  of  guide-books  who  followed  each  other,  for 
right  or  for  wrong,  like  a  flock  of  sheep  through  the 
same  broken  hedges,  down  the  same  steep  places,  into 


272  Galfcs  in  a 


the  same  deep  ruts,  accepting  as  facts  the  statements  of 
their  predecessors  without  any  attempt  at  verification 
or  correction. 

It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  author  of  Hudibras 
was  buried  in  the  yard  of  the  Church  of  St.  Paul, 
Covent  Garden,  L,ondon.  Aubrey  put  him  "in  the 
north  part,  next  the  church,  at  the  east  end.  His  feet 
touch  the  wall."  Anthony  Wood,  on  the  other  hand, 
places  Butler  at  "  the  west  end  of  the  said  churchyard, 
on  the  north  side,  and  under  the  wall  of  the  church, 
that  wall  which  parts  the  yard  from  the  common  high 
way."  And  to  this  day  the  worthies  of  the  parish 
know  not  which  chronicler  is  right  or  if  both  chroniclers 
are  wrong.  The  parish  books,  thoroughly  examined 
by  me,  say  nothing  to  clear  up  the  mystery. 

It  is  equally  well  known  that  a  tablet  to  Butler  was 
placed  in  the  interior  of  the  church  '  '  by  the  inhabitants 
of  the  parish"  in  1786,  all  the  authorities  agreeing 
that  it  was  on  the  south  side.  The  exact  position  of 
this  mural  memorial  is  described  in  the  guide-books 
bearing  date  at  late  as  1884-85  ;  and  its  inscription  is 
even  quoted  in  full  by  the  most  recent  of  the  works  in 
question.  Every  tablet  the  edifice  contained  in  1885 
was  carefully  studied,  and  there  was  found  no  word 
about  Butler.  No  person  connected  with  the  church 
had  ever  seen  or  heard  of  such  a  tablet.  And  then  it 
was  discovered  that  the  church  had  been  destroyed  by 
fire  nine  years  after  the  tablet  was  erected,  and  that  the 
tablet  was  not  restored  or  renewed  or  rebuilt  with 


" 


1bere  Gbes  IReet"  273 


the  church.  The  present  Landmarker  was  probably 
the  first  person  who  had  thought  of  it  or  looked  for  it 
in  nearly  a  century. 

The  guide-books  say  that  James  Boswell,  the  biog 
rapher  of  Johnson,  died  in  1795  at  a  certain  number  of 
a  certain  street  near  Oxford  Street  and  the  Regent 
Circus.  And  the  guide-books  are  undoubtedly  correct. 
But  they  are  not  correct  when  they  point  out,  or  when 
they  used  to  point  out,  a  house  in  that  street,  bearing 
now  the  same  number,  as  being  the  real  house  of  Bos- 
well.  It  is  an  old  house,  clearly  dating  back  to  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  ;  but  since  Boswell'  s  demise 
the  street  has  been  renumbered,  widened,  extended,  and 
renamed  ;  and  the  body  of  Boswell  was  carried,  to  be 
buried  at  his  family  seat  in  Scotland,  from  a  house  no 
longer  standing  and  a  block  or  two  away. 

Among  the  many  images  forced  to  be  broken,  often 
to  the  iconoclast's  own  deep,  sentimental  distress,  was 
the  tomb  of  Goldsmith  by  the  side  of  the  Temple 
Church.  No  one  knows  now  where  his  bones  rest. 
The  monument,  weather-beaten  and  weather-stained, 
looking  very  much  older  than  it  really  is,  was  placed 
in  1860  "  as  near  as  possible  to  the  spot  where  he  is 
supposed  to  lie." 

Massinger  has  no  personal  connection  with  the  stone 
in  the  floor  in  St.  Saviour's,  South  wark,  upon  which 
his  name  is  engraved.  Nor  are  Fletcher  or  Kdmund 
Shakespeare,  the  brother  of  the  Immortal,  in  any  way 
associated,  even  by  conjecture,  with  the  records  that 

18 


274  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

"here  they  rest."  St.  Saviour's  has  been  peculiarly 
inventive  and  destructive  in  this  respect,  for  even  the 
memorials  to  Gower  have  been  moved.  Stow,  in  1603, 
wrote :  ' '  John  Gower,  Esquire,  a  famous  poet,  was 
there  buried,  in  the  north  side  of  that  church,  in  the 
Chapel  of  St.  John,  where  he  lieth  under  a  tomb  of 
stone,  with  his  image,  also  of  stone,  over  him."  But 
the  tomb  of  stone  and  the  image  of  stone  were  trans 
ported,  in  1832,  to  the  south  transept  and  Gower  was 
left  behind. 

They  show  one  in  the  Garrick  Club  in  Garrick 
Street,  Long  Acre,  Thackeray's  chair,  still  carefully 
preserved  "  in  the  corner  in  which  he  loved  to  sit." 
But  the  only  Garrick  Club  that  Thackeray  knew  was 
in  King  Street,  Covent  Garden,  some  little  distance 
away  ;  and  the  Garrick  Club  which  the  gentle  spirit 
of  the  gentle-man  Thackeray  is  supposed  to  haunt  so 
pleasantly  was  not  built  until  a  year  after  Thackeray's 
mortal  part  was  laid  in  Kensal  Green. 

Most  inexplicable  of  all,  perhaps,  is  the  curious  error 
clinging  to  the  single  important  coffee-house  still  left  in 
London,  intact,  as  it  stood  in  Johnson's  day,  "The 
Cheshire  Cheese,"  in  Wine  Office  Court,  Fleet  Street. 
One  is  still  shown  Johnson's  portrait  in  Johnson's 
room  over  Johnson's  table,  and  Johnson's  chair,  in  the 
Cheshire  Cheese.  And  Johnson  clubs,  and  Johnson 
societies,  and  Johnson  worshippers  gather  there  to  do 
honour  to  the  memory  of  Johnson  ;  while  in  all  the 
contemporary  correspondence  and  memorabilia,  and 


Uiterar\>  Incomes  275 

Johnsoniana,  and  Boswelliana,  is  to  be  found  no  allu 
sion  whatever  to  Johnson's  association  with  the  Cheshire 
Cheese  !  It  is  the  only  tavern  of  his  day,  in  his  part  of 
London,  of  which  there  is  no  record  of  its  having  been 
frequented  by  the  man  who  now  renders  it  famous  and 
keeps  it  alive. 

Thus  is  history  made  ! 

To  return,  for  a  sentence  or  two  in  this  connection, 
to  the  emoluments  of  what  is  called  literary  work. 
One  entire  twelvemonth  was  devoted  to  the  ' '  London  ' ' 
book  and  to  nothing  else.  I  was  literally  in  love  with 
the  task  and  it  quite  absorbed  me.  My  income  from 
my  pen,  naturally,  was  confined  to  royalties,  unusually 
small  that  year,  even  for  me.  And  on  the  ist  of  April 
I  received  my  sole  annual  literary  revenue,  a  small 
check  from  J.  R.  Osgood  &  Company,  owing  to  me  on 
"  The  American  Actor  Series."  The  check  was  too 
insignificant  to  merit  a  deposit  in  the  bank  on  its  own 
account ;  there  was  nothing  coming  in  that  month  from 
other  sources  to  be  added  to  it ;  and  it  was  held  over, 
until  certain  patrimonial  coupons  were  due.  But  in 
the  meantime  the  Osgood  House  suspended  payment, 
the  royalty  check  was  returned  with  a  charge  of  some 
seventy-five  cents  for  "  protest";  and  my  total  income 
in  1885  from  that  particular  source  amounted  to  three- 
quarters  of  a  dollar — on  the  wrong  side  of  the  ledger  ! 

To  say  nothing  of  the  year  spent  in  its  actual  pro 
duction,  that  "  London  "  book  was  a  long  time  in  pay 
ing  for  itself.  The  complete  Double  Index  of  Persons 


276  Galfce  in  a  Xibrar? 

and  Places,  with  its  innumerable  cross-references,  was 
a  slow,  laborious,  and  expensive  performance.  I  made 
it,  without  help,  during  many  brain-wearying  and 
many  back-breaking  months  of  dull  routine  work  ;  and 
I  spent  no  small  sum  of  money  in  the  salaries  of  the 
scribes  who  copied  it  and  saw  to  its  correct  alphabetical 
sequence,  and  in  the  payments  to  the  experts  who 
verified  it  all,  after  it  was  completed.  And,  moreover, 
as  the  work  had  none  of  the  qualities  which  would 
warrant  its  appearance  in  magazine  form,  I  have  re 
ceived  from  it  in  money  value  nothing  but  the  semi 
annual,  but  not  enormously  large,  book-royalties. 

The  Landmarks  of  Venice,  of  Florence ',  of  Rome,  and 
of  Jerusalem  found,  on  the  other  hand,  two  markets. 
They  appeared  and  were  paid  for  liberally  in  the 
periodical  before  they  were  sent  out  to  stand  or  to  fall 
alone  between  covers  of  their  own.  And  they  im 
pressed  upon  me,  for  the  first  time,  the  startling  fact — 
startling,  I  mean,  to  authors — that,  in  the  matter  of 
periodical  literature,  at  least,  the  illustrator  generally, 
if  not  always,  is  paid  more  than  the  writer — and  some 
times  a  good  deal  more.  This  I  say  without  wishing, 
in  the  slightest  degree,  to  reflect  upon  the  artist.  It  is 
not  his  fault  if  his  work  is  worth  more  to  the  publisher 
than  is  mine ;  it  is  merely  my  misfortune.  For  the 
articles  upon  the  three  Italian  cities,  and  upon  the 
ancient  capital  of  Judea,  the  editor  of  Harper" s  Maga 
zine  gave  me  one  thousand  dollars  ;  a  sum  with  which 
I  was  perfectly  satisfied.  Mr.  du  Mond,  who  made  the 


artist  an&  Hutbor  277 

drawings  which  so  enrich  the  text,  received  from  the 
head  of  the  Art  Department,  two  thousand  five  hundred 
dollars ;  and  he  deserved  it.  But  there  his  share  in 
the  profits  ceased,  while  mine  continued.  For  he  has 
no  interest  whatever  in  those  long-drawn-out,  and 
comforting,  royalties  upon  the  books. 

This  condition  of  affairs  is  not  at  all  uncommon. 
Mr.  Frank  D.  Millet,  artist  in  words  as  well  as  colours, 
spent,  I  remember,  some  years  ago  when  he  was  living 
in  New  York,  not  a  little  time  upon  a  paper  entitled 
* '  Cossac  Life, ' '  based  upon  his  intimate  knowledge  of 
Cossac  character.  He  presented  it  to  the  editor  of 
Harper's,  who  said  he  would  gladly  accept  it  if  it  were 
illustrated.  In  his  sketch-books  Mr.  Millet  found  a 
number  of  half- forgotten,  stray,  and  various  studies  of 
the  Cossac  and  his  surroundings  ;  a  number  of  typical 
faces,  male  and  female  ;  bits  of  uniform,  of  harness  and 
of  armour,  spear-heads,  pitstol  butts,  saddles,  headgear 
and  footgear,  and  the  like.  From  these,  with  pen  and 
ink,  he  readily  evolved  in  half,  or  less  than  half,  the 
time  it  took  him  to  prepare  his  article,  all  that  was 
necessary  to  make  it  acceptable  and  understandable, 
in  a  pictorial  way.  For  his  written  sketch,  as  an 
author,  he  received  an  hundred  dollars.  For  his  drawn 
sketches,  as  an  artist,  he  was  to  his  surprise  paid  three 
hundred  dollars  more.  And,  curiously  enough,  he  was 
better  pleased  with  and  more  proud  of  that  part  of  the 
work  which  had  brought  him  the  less  financial  profit. 

The  Literary  Landmarks  of  Edinburgh ,  a  later  book 


278  Galhs  in  a  library 

than  that  on  London,  was  a  simpler  task.  Edinboro' 
is  a  smaller  city,  its  literary  lights  are  fewer,  and  the 
changes  and  growth  of  the  town  are  not  so  great. 
And  above  all  I  had  the  help  and  sympathy  of  almost 
every  individual  I  questioned.  Scotchmen  love  their 
heroes  and  worship  them ;  and  know  full  well  where 
they  lived,  and  died,  and  were  buried,  There  were 
two  White-Horse  Inns  in  Kdinboro';  both  of  them 
celebrated,  although  they  were  not  contemporaries ; 
and  of  course  they  are  mixed  up,  in  our  days,  by  care 
less  guide-books.  One  was  near  the  "  Foot"  of  the 
Canongate,  the  other  near  the  * '  Top. ' '  The  Canon- 
gate,  by  the  way,  is  the  name  of  a  dirty,  old  street,  that 
is  very  interesting  for  its  associations'  sake.  In  search 
of  one  of  these  White-Horse  Inns,  the  pilgrim,  mis 
directed,  of  course,  went  to  the  wrong  end  of  the 
Canongate  and,  of  course,  he  could  find  it  not.  But 
he  entered  a  public-house  near  where  he  thought  the 
White  Horse  Inn  ought  to  be,  or  ought  to  have  been, 
and  he  asked  the  way  to  it.  To  him  spoke  a  miserably 
clad,  wretched-looking,  half-drunken  man,  who  said, 
"  Were  you  in  search  of  Waverley's  White-Horse  Inn, 
or  of  Dr.  Johnson's  White- Horse  Inn  ?  "  And  then  he 
told  him — for  the  price  of  a  dram — the  position  of  each 
of  them  and  most  of  their  history.  The  same  man, 
living  in  Gough  Square  in  London,  in  Johnson's  very 
house,  would  never  have  heard  of  Johnson  and  cer 
tainly  would  never  have  heard  of  Rasselas. 

Another  day  I  was  in  search  of  the  "  Dame's  "  School 


FRANCIS  DAVID  MILLET,  BY  SAINT-GAUDENS 


Xot>e  of  Iberoes  279 

"  in  Hamilton' s  En  try— off  Bristo'  Street" — where  Sir 
Walter  Scott  was  taught  his  letters.  There  was  no 
sign  of  it,  and  I  received  no  satisfactory  reply  to  the 
questions  asked  until  I  went  into  another  public-house 
— for  it  was  soon  ascertained  that  most  of  the  intelli 
gence  of  the  lower  walks  of  life  in  Edinboro'  was  to  be 
found,  alas  !  in  the  public-house.  Here  was  met  a  man 
who  had  seen  better  days,  although  on  that  day  he  had 
sunk  to  the  bottom  of  days  and  nights.  He  had  evi 
dently  been  a  gentleman,  or  something  like  it,  once  ; 
and  "  too  much  whiskey"  was  written  all  over  him. 
He  gave  the  information  sought,  without  hesitation, 
and  then — for  the  price  of  a  dram — he  said  suddenly 
and  solemnly  :  ' '  Do  you  know  that  the  spot  on  which 
thou  art  standing  is  holy  ground  ?  Here  Tom  Camp 
bell  wrote  The  Pleasures  of  Hope  !  Yonder  lies  Mrs. 
Cockburn,  who  wrote  The  Flowers  of  the  Forest.  De 
Quincey  was  buried  over  there.  Over  there  Robert 
Ferguson  lived,  and  yonder  once  lodged  Robbie 
Burns  ! ' '  And  in  each  instance,  as  later  research  has 
shown,  he  was  entirely  correct. 

I  was  standing  one  morning  in  St.  James  Square 
trying  to  make  out  in  which  house  Burns  had  lived  for 
a  time,  when  an  old  man,  a  plasterer  by  profession, 
stopped  and  asked  if  I  were  looking  at  the  poet's  win 
dow.  Naturally,  I  was  curious  to  find  out  what,  and 
how  much,  he  knew  about  it ;  and  I  learned  that  in 
his  boyhood  he  was  a  friend  of  Burns' s  "  Clorinda," 
who  in  her  old  age  had  shown  him  the  casement  out 


280  ftalhs  in  a 


of  which  Burns  had  watched  for  her  as  she  passed  ; 
and  I  gathered  that  he  never  went  by  without  casting 
a  glance  up  at  it  and  —  mentally  —  taking  off  his  hat  to 
the  one-time  occupant  of  the  room  it  lighted.  The 
Scotchman  never  takes  his  hat  off  —  actually  —  to  any 
body  but  the  Duke  of  Buccleuch,  or  the  Duke  of 
Argyle  ! 

In  Buccleuch  Pend  —  a  pend  is  an  archway,  making 
a  passage  under  tall  houses  from  street  to  street  —  in 
Buccleuch  Pend  was  once  a  public-house  in  which 
Burns  is  known  to  have  occasionally  refreshed  himself. 
I  was  anxious  to  place  it  exactly  ;  and  as  no  sign  of  it 
now  exists,  I  sought  information  of  the  present  inhabi 
tants  of  the  neighbourhood.  One  man  had  lived  in 
that  very  house  all  his  life,  and  he  remembered  hearing 
a  lecture  in  his  boyhood,  in  which  the  whole  matter 
was  laid  bare.  The  lecturer  was  still  living  and  to 
him  I  went.  He  told  me  the  story  and  established  the 
exact  site.  Then  I  asked  him  if  he  knew  the  house 
where  Burns  and  Scott  had  met  for  the  first  and  only 
time.  He  gave  me  his  ideas  and  the  address  of  a  man 
who  could  tell  me  more.  To  this  man  I  went  and 
I  found  in  him  an  enthusiastic  antiquary,  by  profession 
a  book-cover  maker.  He  lived  in  the  famous  house 
himself,  he  had  searched  the  records  himself,  and  he 
helped  me  to  identify  and  to  make  public  for  the  first 
time  "the  spot  where  Robert  Burns  ordained  Sir 
Scott!" 

All  this  could  have  befallen  a  literary  pilgrim  in  no 


SometbitiQ  Hfce  Ifame          281 

other  city  of  the  world.  They  passed  me  on  from  man 
to  man,  each  man  giving  me  the  information  sought ; 
each  man's  information  being  more  valuable  to  me 
than  the  last,  and  each  man  being  as  eager  to  give  the 
information  as  I  was  to  obtain  it. 

One  of  the  most  gratifying  experiences  of  my  life 
was  connected  with  the  making  of  this  Edinboro' 
book.  The  Harpers  were  to  have  sent  an  illustrator  to 
meet  me  there,  but  he  did  not  come ;  and  I  was  forced 
to  set  myself  out  in  search  of  illustrations  of  my  own. 
In  the  window  of  an  old  book  and  print  shop  in  Bristo' 
Place,  I  saw  some  engraved  views  of  the  town  which  I 
thought  would  serve  my  purpose.  In  conversation 
with  the  dealer,  I  mentioned  that  I  was  commissioned 
by  an  American  magazine  to  write  an  article  upon  the 
"  Homes  and  Haunts  of  the  Scottish  Men  of  Letters  in 
the  Scottish  Metropolis."  He  said  that  the  Earl  of 
Rosebery  had  been  into  his  place  that  very  day,  and 
had  remarked  that  he  wished  somebody  would  do  for 
Edinboro',  in  that  line,  what  an  American  writer  had 
been  doing  for  London.  I  replied  that  the  wish  was 
very  gratifying,  because  I  presumed  that  I  was  the 
American  writer  in  question.  "  Losh  !  mon  !  "  cried 
the  little  bookseller, — "  Losh  !  mon  !  you  're  no'  Laur 
ence  Hutton  !  Come  with  me  !  "  And  he  led  me  into 
a  little  back-room,  and  out  of  a  bureau  drawer  he  took 
two  copies  of  the  Century  Magazine  containing  articles 
of  mine  upon  "  The  Portraits  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots." 
I  discovered  that  he  knew  all  about  me.  And  I  felt 


282  £alfcs  in  a 


that  this,  at  last,  was  Fame,  or  something  like  it.  My 
name  and  work  were  familiar  to  a  man  living  three 
thousand  miles  away.  And  I  felt  that  my  head  was 
swelling  ! 

On  the  last  night  of  our  stay  in  Hdinboro'  that  year, 
with  my  work  there  all  done,  I  walked  out  after  dinner 
to  take  a  last  look  at  Scott's  house  in  George  Square 
and  to  satisfy  myself  as  to  what  was  meant  by  the 
"  sunk-floor"  in  which  the  young  Scott  had  a  "  den  " 
full  of  books.  While  I  was  standing  in  front  of  the 
building,  smoking  my  cigar,  a  gentleman  came  along 
and  noticed  my  interest  in  the  place.  He  stopped  and 
spoke  to  me,  learned  who  I  was,  and  what  I  wanted  to 
know,  and  he  said  that  Scott's  house  had  been  changed 
but  that  he  himself  lived  next  door  ;  and  he  offered  to 
show  me  his  own  "  sunk-floor,"  which  I  discovered  to 
be,  simply,  what  is  called  "a  front  basement"  in 
America,  a  room  a  few  feet  below  the  street-level.  He 
then  took  me  through  his  house,  presented  me  to  his 
wife  and  daughters,  and  insisted  on  my  taking  "  a  bit 
of  supper"  with  him.  When  I  mentioned  my  wife, 
his  wife  said  she  would  call  on  her  at  once,  and  re 
gretted  that  she  had  not  had  an  opportunity  to  meet 
her  before.  We  were  to  leave  the  next  morning  by  an 
early  train,  and  when  the  next  morning  came  my  host 
and  his  daughter  were  at  the  early  train  to  see  us  off; 
he  with  a  book  for  me  to  read  on  the  journey,  she  with 
a  bunch  of  flowers  for  the  wife.  We  parted  with  them 
as  if  they  were  old  friends  ;  and  all  this  was  because  I 


ri;«H 


flDortalit?  283 


was  a  lover  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  a  stranger  in 
Kdinboro' ! 

I  corresponded  with  these  new -old  friends  of  mine 
for  some  years.  They  wrote  to  me  when  their  daughter 
married,  and  they  received  my  heartiest  congratula 
tions.  They  wrote  to  me  when  their  daughter  died — 
within  the  twelvemonth, — and  I  sent  them  my  sincerest 
sympathy.  We  had  an  intimate  fellow-feeling.  We 
loved  Sir  Walter  Scott ! 

Old  Mortality  (whom  Scott  immortalised)  was  my 
maternal  grandfather's  uncle  or  cousin — I  have  never 
been  able  to  establish  which, — and  his  house  in  Hag- 
gisha,  in  the  town  of  Hawick,  is  the  same  in  which  my 
grandfather  and  my  grandfather's  mother  were  cradled. 
Lately  there  has  been  a  tablet  placed  upon  the  front 
wall  of  this  thatched  cottage,  stating  the  fact  that 
Robert  Patterson,  the  prototype  of  Old  Mortality,  was 
born  there  in  1715. 

In  the  Introduction  to  Old  Mortality  Scott  wrote  : 

"  Robert  Patterson,  alias  Old  Mortality,  was  the  son 
of  Walter  Patterson  and  Margaret  Scott  who  lived 
during  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Here 
(in  the  house  of  Haggisha)  Robert  was  born  in  1715." 

Later  on,  in  the  same  Introduction,  Sir  Walter, 
speaking  of  the  three  sons  of  Old  Mortality,  says  that 
one  of  them,  "  John,  moved  to  America  in  1776  and, 
after  various  vicissitudes  of  fortune,  settled  in  Balti 
more."  There  is  a  tradition  that  a  daughter  of  this 
John  Patterson,  a  famous  beauty  in  her  time,  became, 


284  £alfcs  in  a  Xibran> 

for  a  while,  the  wife  of  Jerome  Bonaparte.  The  tra 
dition  is  firmly  believed  to  this  day  by  the  descendants 
of  the  Pattersons  and  the  Scotts  of  Haggisha. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  and  Robert  Patterson  —  although 
the  author  never  hints  it — were  distantly  connected  by 
marriage.  My  grandfather,  William  Scott,  who  had  a 
brother  Walter,  always  boasted  of  the  relationship, 
remote  as  it  was,  and  of  his  acquaintance,  slight  as  it 
was,  with  the  L,aird  of  Abbotsford.  Herding  the  cows 
in  his  own  native  parish  of  Ha  wick,  he  often  saw  there 
the  Shirra  (Sheriff)  riding  by  the  pasture.  Having  a 
brother  William  himself,  the  Shirra? s  invariable  salu 
tation  on  these  occasions  was  : 

11  Good-morning,  Wully,  hoo  's  Waltaire?" 

And  the  equally  invariable  reply  from  the  lad 
was  : 

"  He  's  brawlie,  Sir  Waltaire  ;  hoo  's  Wully  ?  " 

This  was  considered  a  great  joke,  and  it  stood  for  a 
good  many  years,  highly  respected  to  the  end  and 
seemingly  as  fresh  to  each  of  them  as  if  it  had  never 
been  uttered  before. 

Old  Mortality  was  a  stone  mason,  and  the  people  of 
Haggisha  still  have  his  trowel  and  his  spectacles, 
which  I  should  very  much  like  to  possess. 

I  once  wrote  of  the  Old  Mortality-Patterson-Bonaparte 
marriage  in  the  New  York  Evening  Mail,  but  my  state 
ment  was  strenuously  controverted.  When  I  was  in 
Hawick — more  than  thirty  years  ago  now, — I  found 
that  while  my  cousins,  the  Scotts,  had  no  proofs  of  the 


Pencil  Xiheness  of  Sir  Matter  285 

connection,  it  was  a  valued  and  entirely  accepted  tra 
dition  among  them. 

One  of  the  most  precious  of  my  treasures  is  a  slight 
but  original  crayon  sketch  of  Sir  Walter,  by  Gilbert 
Stuart  Newton,  and  from  life.  This  I  had  admired 
greatly  in  the  rooms  of  my  friend  Mr.  Hennell,  in  Lyn 
don,  and  I  had  so  expressed  myself  on  many  occasions. 
Without  comment  from  its  donor,  the  little  portrait  was 
left  at  my  door,  among  some  other  things  of  much  less 
value  which  he  had  promised  me  ;  and  for  it,  the  very 
next  day,  I  was  offered  an  exceedingly  and  ridiculously 
high  price  by  a  collector  of  such  things.  Upon  taking 
it  to  America  and  comparing  it  with  a  very  rare  print 
of  the  original  by  Gilbert  Stuart  Newton,  R.  A.,  I  dis 
covered  that,  while  the  resemblance  between  them  was 
very  marked,  the  print  was  not  reproduced  from  my 
drawing ;  and  I  felt  I  had  been  cherishing  something 
which,  charming  as  it  is,  is  not  what  it  claimed  to  be, 
until  in  reading  over  the  Recollections  of  Charles  Robert 
Leslie  I  came  by  accident  upon  the  following  para 
graph  : 

"A  profile  of  Walter  Scott,  in  lead  pencil,  drawn  by 
Newton,  I  had  seen  before  and  I  had  asked  him  to  give 
it  to  me.  He  had  promised  that  he  would  when  he 
had  made  a  copy  of  it.  And  he  now  (1834)  showed  me 
the  copy,  and  said  I  might  have  that  or  the  first.  I 
chose  the  first,  but  they  are  both  very  like  Sir  Walter." 

Whether  mine  is  the  first,  or  the  copy,  I  know  not. 
But  it  also  is  very  like  Sir  Walter. 


286  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

During  my  visits  to  Edinburgh  I  occasionally  saw 
Dr.  John  Brown  in  the  streets,  always  accompanied  by 
a  dog  or  two.  After  reading  Rab  and  His  Friends  and 
Marjory  Fleming  I  had  a  great  reverence  for  their 
author,  particularly  when  I  had  heard  the  sad  story  of 
his  life  and  of  his  life's  sorrow,  so  like  that  of  the 
Thackeray  concerning  whom  he  had  written  so  beauti 
fully  and  tenderly.  Once  I  followed  him  into  a  book 
shop  on  Princes  Street,  and  lounged  about  the  counter 
while  I  listened  to  his  talk.  Going  out  before  him,  I 
stopped  to  speak  to  a  Dandie  Dinmont  of  his  who  was 
patiently  waiting  at  the  door  and  looking  wistfully  for 
his  master  to  come.  The  dog  responded  cordially  to 
my  advances  and  seemed  to  feel  that  we  had  a  good 
deal  in  common.  I  was  rewarded  by  a  kindly  smile  of 
half  recognition  from  the  master  as  I  raised  my  hat  to 
him  and  passed  on.  I  was  very  anxious  to  meet  and 
to  know  the  gentle  old  man,  so  beautiful  and  so  kindly 
in  face,  but  we  had  no  friends  in  common  and  I  never 
had  the  courage  or  the  assurance  to  feign  illness  that  I 
might  consult  him  in  a  professional  way,  although  I 
was  often  tempted  to  do  so.  At  last  the  opportunity 
came,  which  I  chronicled  in  my  note-book  thus  : 

"Aug.  i6th,  1876.  Bdinboro'.  Called  upon  Dr.  John 
Brown  with  Kate  Field  and  Louise  Chandler  Moulton. 
Mrs.  Moulton  had  a  letter  to  him  from  John  G.  Whit- 
tier,  and  our  reception  on  that  account  was  cordial. 
His  library  or  study  is  a  small  book-lined  room  with 
one  window.  The  books  were  medical  and  classical 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTf,  DRAWN  FROM  LIFE  BY  GILBERT  STEWART  NEWTON 


*  3obn  Brown  287 


books  of  reference,  histories  and  general  literature; 
old  books  in  plain  bindings,  rare  prints,  and  original 
sketches  ;  photographs  of  the  leading  literary  men  of 
the  day;  of  Thackeray,  Kmerson,  Mark  Twain,  and 
Dr.  Brown  on  one  carte;  and  dogs  without  end; 
original  L,andseers  with  Landseer's  compliments,  and 
original  sketches  by  Leach  with  Leach's  love;  the 
large  head  of  c  Rab  '  which  Kdmonston  &  Douglass 
have  had  engraved  for  the  book';  and  Marjory  Flem 
ing.  He  spoke  very  affectionately  of  Whittier,  quoted 
some  of  his  verses,  and  had  a  very  high  regard  fot 
Kmerson. 

1  '  When  asked  by  Miss  Field  how  he  wrote  Marjory 
Fleming,  he  said,  '  I  did  not  write  her,  —  she  wrote 
herself.'  Marjory's  sister  had  been  to  see  him  the  day 
we  called.  He  said  he  had  but  one  dog  now,  a  terrier, 
who  had  gone  to  the  seaside  for  his  holidays  and  for  a 
change  of  air.  Dr.  Brown  is  a  sweet-faced,  white- 
haired,  mild-mannered,  gentle  old  man,  with  a  pleasant 
voice,  and  with  a  peacefulness  about  him  that  is  charm 
ing.  He  has  a  sad  look,  however,  which  may  be  ac 
counted  for  perhaps  by  the  melancholy  madness  which 
sometimes  takes  possession  of  him  and  which  is 
inherent. 

'  '  He  remembered  my  name  as  that  of  the  man  who 
had  sent  him  from  America  photographs  of  I/ong- 
fellow,  Holmes,  Kmerson,  Hawthorne,  Bryant,  and 
others,  whom  I  happened  to  have  learned  he  wished  to 
possess.  And  he  gave  me  his  autograph  photograph 


288  Galhs  in  a  library 

in  return.  I  never  saw  him  again,  but  the  pleasant 
memory  of  that  short  interview  I  will  carry  with  me  to 
the  grave,  and  Dr.  John  Brown  of  Edinburgh  is  one 
of  the  men  I  hope  to  know  better  in  the  better  world 
to  which  he  has  gone." 


CHAPTER  XI 

The  Collectors  of  Autographs  —  Begging  Letters — The  Con 
scientious  Collector  and  the  Pirate — A  Dickens 
Pilgrimage— Mary  Anderson. 

"  AUTOGRAPHISKRS,"  as  Dibdin  once,  and  a  little 
disrespectfully,  spoke  of  them,  may  be  divided  into  four 
distinct  classes — the  Buyers,  the  Beggars,  the  Stealers, 
and  the  Receivers.  The  first  study  the  catalogues  ; 
they  order  by  mail  or  by  wire ;  sometimes  they  ex 
change,  and  they  always  pay  full  prices.  They  find 
profit  and,  no  doubt,  a  certain  amount  of  pleasure  in 
their  hunting  and  angling  for  letters  and  signatures. 
They  bag  their  game,  and  they  catch  their  fish,  ready 
cooked.  It  is  often  the  rarest  of  fish  and  game.  But 
it  is  not  sport. 

The  real  collector  would  not  exchange  a  little  note 
in  his  possession,  written  on  the  night  of  his  election  to 
the  Century  Club,  containing  the  simple  words,  "  Dear 
Mother  Blank,  your  Boy  is  a  Centurion,"  and  signed 
"  Kdwin  ' '  (Booth),  for  the  manuscript  of  Washington's 
Farewell  Address  ;  nor  would  he  give  a  familiar  letter 
of  Bunner's,  full  of  affectionate  personalities  and  clos 
ing,  "  with  love,  as  always,  to  the  Wife,"  for  the  sealed 
and  signed  Death-Warrant  of  L,ady  Jane  Grey. 


290  Galfcs  in  a 


The  mendicant  of  autographs  seems  to  find  pleasure 
in  his  methods,  and  now  and  then  he  finds  profit  ;  for 
he  has  been  known  to  sell  the  results  of  his  begging  to 
men  who  are  too  proud  to  beg  for  themselves.  But  he 
is  generally  an  honest  suppliant,  holding  his  hat  in  his 
hand,  or,  with  palm  extended,  telling  you  openly  that 
he  wants  your  signature,  enclosing  a  card  upon  which 
to  write  it  and  a  stamped  envelope  addressed  to  himself 
in  which  to  return  the  card.  And  he  rarely  says 
'Thank  you,"  in  reply!  Sometimes  he  demands  a 
little  more.  If  you  are  are  an  artist,  he  asks  for  a 
sketch  ;  if  you  are  an  author,  he  asks  for  a  quotation  ; 
if  you  are  a  man  of  affairs,  he  asks  for  a  sentiment  ;  if 
you  are  a  clergyman,  he  asks  for  a  text  ;  if  you  are  a 
doctor,  he  asks  for  a  prescription;  if  you  are  a  judge,  he 
asks  for  a  short  sentence  —  in  favour  of  the  plaintiff. 
Not  infrequently  he  tells  you  how  much  he  admires 
your  work,  or  your  course  ;  he  adds  that  in  his  part  of 
the  community  your  name  is  a  household  word  ;  and 
in  addressing  you  he  spells  your  name  wrong.  Once 
in  a  while  he  gets  all  mixed  up,  and  asks  his  favourite 
author  what  he  is  painting  now  ;  or  his  favourite  artist 
when  he  is  to  publish  his  next  book.  Often  he  is  more 
insidious  in  his  inquiries  ;  and  while  he  says  he  realises 
that  he  is  trespassing  upon  your  valuable  time  —  a  very 
popular  expression  of  his  —  he  ventures  to  seek  some 
indispensable  information  as  to  the  present  address  of 
Mr.  Mark  Twain  for  instance  ;  or  as  to  the  number  and 
names  of  the  children  of  Mr.  Frank  Stockton  ;  or  if 


1 


O* 


R, 


4 


A  PAGE  FROM  THE  HUTTON  QUEST-BOOK 


Bemanbe  of  Collectors 


Miss  Julia  Marlowe  ever  played  "Meg  Merrillies,"  and 
if  so,  when,  and  who  were  in  the  cast  ;  or  if  Mr. 
Richard  Harding  Davis'  s  "Gallagher"  was  an  actual 
episode  in  his  own  life  ;  or  if  George  du  Maurier  was 
the  real  name  of  the  author  of  Trilby  •,  or  merely  a 
pseudonym  ;  or  if  you  prefer  Dickens  to  Thackeray, 
spring  to  autumn,  the  mountains  to  the  sea-shore  ;  or 
if  you  ride  a  wheel,  and  whose  make  ;  or  if  you  shave 
yourself  or  go  to  the  barber's  ;  or  if  you  believe  in  the 
higher  education  of  women  ;  or  does  authorship  pay  ? 
He  generally  encloses  a  stamp.  But  he  almost  invari 
ably  forgets  to  say  "  Thank  you,  sir  !  "  And  "  Thank 
you,  sir  !  "  is  so  easily  said  ! 

A  very  interesting  specimen  of  the  autograph  -beg 
gar's  literary  style,  received  not  long  ago,  is  here  given 
verbatim.  It  reads:  "Dear  Sir.  Among  the  many 
important  duties  that  engross  your  time  and  thoughts, 
I  would  respectfully  solicit  one  moment  of  your  time, 
and  proffer  an  earnest  request  that  I  may  possess  some 
autographic  remembrance  from  your  hand.  I  desire 
much,  and  would  highly  prize,  such  a  souvenir  from 
one  to  whom  I  am  so  greatly  indebted  for  many  an 
hour  of  pleasure  and  profit  that  has  been  afforded  me 
through  your  very  interesting  books.  Since  the  criti 
cal  press  and  public  have  long  since  placed  the  stamp 
of  their  high  endorsement  upon  your  refined,  instruc 
tive,  and  always  excellent  work,  I  feel  that  my  wee 
tribute  of  appreciation  must  seem  indeed  trifling  to 
you.  Yet  I  am  quite  sure  that  in  such  expression  I 


292  £alfc0  in  a  Xibrar? 

am  but  voicing  the  opinions  of  thousands  of  lovers  of 
good  literature  in  our  land,  who,  like  myself,  have  been 
greatly  influenced,  instructed,  and  entertained  by  your 
writings.  Trusting  that  the  sincerity  of  my  request 
ma}r  kindly  excuse  whatever  inconvenience  that  shall 
attend  your  compliance  with  it,  I  remain,  Yours  very 
sincerely." 

As  the  request  is  absolutely  impersonal  and  indirect, 
its  sincerity  must  be  doubted.  It  is  evidently  one  of 
very  many  similar  letters  sent  to  the  authors  of  enter 
taining,  instructive,  and  influential  works,  whose 
names  were  to  be  read  on  the  title-pages  of  books 
found  in  the  circulating  library  to  which  the  writer 
had  access. 

The  compliance  with  the  request,  it  may  be  added, 
met  with  no  expression  of  "Thank  you,  sir."  And 
why  not  ? 

The  worst  form  of  autographic  beggary  is  displayed 
by  the  young  person,  hinted  at  above,  who  trespasses 
upon  your  valuable  time  with  the  request  to  read  an 
accompanying  essay,  story,  or  poem  ;  to  criticise  it 
freely  and  fully  ;  to  tell  the  young  person  candidly 
what  you  consider  its  merits ;  to  point  out  its  short 
comings — if  any  ;  and  to  present  it  to  some  editor  of 
your  acquaintance  for  immediate  publication.  By  so 
doing  you  will  make  the  young  person  the  very  hap 
piest  of  mortals,  perhaps  you  will  save  a  large  and 
dependent  family  from  penury  or  worse,  and  you  will 
certainly  confer  a  boon  upon  the  reading- world. 


J 


A 


Hutbors'  IRccipe  Booh      293 


Stamps  are  enclosed  for  a  reply.  But  the  '  '  Thank 
you,  sir,"  as  usual,  is  omitted. 

One  young  person  ventured  to  trespass  in  this  way 
upon  the  valuable  time  of  a  total  stranger  because  his 
father,  whom  the  stranger  did  not  remember,  had  once 
made  an  ocean  voyage  with  him  ;  another  asked  him  to 
read  her  verses  because  her  favourite  uncle  bore  his 
first  name  and  spelled  it  in  the  same  manner  ;  another 
ventured  because  he  had  broken  his  leg  ;  another  tres 
passed  —  without  apologising  for  the  venture  —  because 
she  had  read  in  her  local  paper  that  the  hall  of  his 
house  was  filled  with  rare  portraits  and  prints  ;  and 
still  another  took  the  liberty  because  he  knew  that  the 
stranger  was  a  friend  of  Walt  Whitman,  and  because 
he  wanted  —  not  an  autograph  of  the  stranger  —  but  an 
autograph  poem  of  Walt  Whitman,  signed  ! 

Perhaps  the  most  ingenious  and  the  most  original  of 
all  these  schemes  for  procuring  autographs  was  from  a 
lady  in  a  Western  town.  She  was  raising  funds  for  the 
building  and  support  of  a  public  library,  and  she  had 
conceived  the  idea  of  issuing  a  volume  to  be  called 
"  The  Authors'  Recipe  Book."  Authors  from  all  over 
the  country,  the  most  distinguished  of  Authors  —  always 
Authors  with  a  capital  "A"  —  had  been  good  enough  to 
send  her  a  list  of  the  favourite  dishes  of  their  own  con 
struction,  with  their  method  of  making  them. 

The  cook-book  was  one  of  the  many  forms  of  litera 
ture  to  which  the  present  recipient  had  never  turned 
his  attention.  He  had  no  more  idea  of  cooking:  than 


294  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrarp 

he  had  of  milking  a  cow,  or  of  harnessing  a  horse,  or 
of  setting  a  hen,  or  of  building  a  dynamo.  He  did  not 
even  care  what  was  cooked  for  him,  so  long  as  it  con 
tained  none  of  the  ingredients  of  tripe  and  none  of  the 
essence  of  the  tomato.  But  he  was  asked  to  contribute 
a  paper — which  she  would  have  reproduced  in  fac-simile 
— stating  what  he  could  prepare — most  to  his  liking — 
upon  a  kitchen  range,  or  in  a  chafing-dish — with  his 
manner  of  procedure.  This  quite  non-plussed  him, 
until  he  bethought  himself  of  one  particular  and  pe 
culiar  delicacy,  in  the  evolution  of  which  he  could 
safely  trust  his  reputation  as  an  expert.  In  reply— for 
which  he  received  no  thanks — he  said  :  "  Take  a  long 
paper-cutter  ;  attach  to  the  same,  by  means  of  rubber- 
bands  and  securely,  an  ink-eraser ;  insert  the  ink- 
eraser  firmly  into  a  marsh-mallow  plug,  and  hold  the 
same  over  a  student's  lamp  or  study-fire  until  the 
marsh- mallow  begins  to  sizzle,  drops  into  the  ashes, 
puts  out  the  light,  or  burns  your  hand.  And  eat 
while  hot!" 

To  most  of  these  petitions,  modest  and  otherwise, 
and  every  one  of  them  actually  received,  some  sort  of 
reply  has  usually  been  granted  at  no  little  sacrifice  of 
time.  But  the  "  Thank  you,  sir,"  was  rarely  re 
turned.  In  one  particular  instance,  where  no  reply 
was  possible,  there  came  in  due  course  the  very  reverse 
of  "thanks."  The  writer  said  that  she  was  quite  well 
aware  that  she  was  at  that  moment  one  of  many  who 
preferred  similar  requests  without  the  slightest  claim 


Hn  Inbignant  Corresponbent    295 

upon  her  victim's  time  or  patience.  In  spite  of  this  too 
certain  knowledge,  she  ventured  (they  always  venture, 
you  see)  to  send  a  few  poems.  It  was  imperative  de 
sire  that  led  her  to  cause  this  trouble  ;  and  having  been 
fortunate  enough  to  find  acceptance  in  various  places, 
she  would  still  like  to  have  the  dictum  of  one  whose 
judgment  she  felt  was  assured  —  to  wit,  catholic  and 
discriminating,  etc.  All  of  which  was  very  pretty 
and  very  flattering  ;  and  the  poems  themselves  were 
not  so  awfully  bad.  Stamps  were  enclosed  for  their 
return,  and  for  the  victim's  catholic  and  discriminating 
dictum,  but  nowhere  was  any  hint  given  as  to  the  resi 
dence  or  post-office  address  of  the  poetess.  She  lived, 
then,  somewhere  on  Main  Street,  at  number  85.  And 
that  is  all  that  was  known  about  her.  In  the  course 
of  a  few  months  there  came  a  second  letter — this  time 
lacking  even  the  Main  Street  as  a  guide,  and  in  an  en 
velope  which,  as  in  the  former  case,  had  unfortunately 
been  destroyed  without  a  glance  at  the  post-mark.  She 
was  deeply  hurt,  she  said,  at  the  neglect,  and  she  was 
almost  ashamed  of  the  marked  discourtesy  towards  a 
member,  if  an  humble  member,  of  the  Guild  of  Letters. 
She  hinted  that  if  the  name  at  the  bottom  of  her  verses 
had  been  as  famous  as  that  of  Mrs.  Browning  or  of 
Miss  Ingelow,  the  result  would  have  been  very  differ 
ent  ;  and  she  went  so  far  as  to  insinuate  that  her  silent 
correspondent  had,  after  the  manner  of  his  kind,  ap 
propriated  her  stamps  to  his  own  base  uses. 

Among  the  most  trying  of  begging  letters  are  those 


296  Galfcs  in  a  Xibran> 

which  are  accompanied  by  printed  books,  generally 
with  presentation-inscriptions.  The  volume  is,  usually, 
the  first  venture  of  some  young  author,  who  asks  for  a 
published  review  in  the  journal  with  which  the  recipient 
is  connected;  or,  failing  that,  for  a  personal  acknowledg 
ment,  with  some  unprejudiced  opinion  concerning  the 
work  and  some  kindly  advice  for  future  guidance. 
The  book  is,  not  infrequently,  privately  printed  ;  it  is 
almost  always  in  verse  ;  its  value  for  the  critic  to  whom 
it  is  sent  is  very  small ;  and  the  "  Thank  you,  sir,"  in 
this  case,  is  not  always  so  easily  said.  If  it  goes  to  Mr. 
Howells,  to  Mr.  Warner,  to  Mr.  Bridges,  or  to  Mr. 
Woodbury,  the  response  to  the  gift  is  worth,  in  the 
autograph-market,  twice  as  much  as  the  gift  itself. 

Certain  applications  which  must,  of  necessity,  meet 
with  a  negative  answer  are  requests  to  an  author  for 
the  autograph  letters  he  has  received  and  preserved  from 
those  of  his  personal  friends  who  have  gone,  alas,  to 
that  land  from  which  no  letters  or  messages  are  sent. 
For  weeks  after  the  death  of  Lowell,  of  Booth,  of  Bar 
rett,  of  Kate  Field,  of  Bunner,  of  Walcott  Balestier,  of 
Lester  Wallack,  of  Celia  Thaxter,  of  du  Maurier,  con 
cerning  whom  at  the  time  a  certain  journalist  had  said 
something  in  print,  he  was  deluged  with  letters  which 
begged  letters  of  theirs.  A  few  lines  of  Mrs.  Thaxter' s, 
in  which  she  mentioned  "The  Little  Sandpiper,"  or 
some  of  the  wild  flowers  she  knew  and  loved  so  well, 
would  please  a  bed- ridden  woman  who  had  never  seen 
the  sea-shore  or  heard  the  murmur  of  the  waves,  ex- 


DRAWING  BY  FREDERICK  BARNARD 


ZTbanfc  H?ou,  Sir  297 

cept  as  Mrs.  Thaxter  had  written  of  them  and  spoken 
through  them  in  the  pages  of  her  books.  A  youth 
who  was  president  of  the  literary  society  in  the  high 
school  of  his  native  village  said,  concerning  two  notes 
of  du  Maurier  which  had  been  quoted,  that,  while  he 
would  willingly  accept  either  of  them,  he  would  very 
much  prefer  that  one  in  which  the  novelist  spoke  of 
Frederick  Walker  as  being  in  a  way  the  original  of 
Little  Billee,  and  which  described  the  music- teacher  in 
Antwerp,  upon  whom  Svengali  was  based.  And  a 
professional  writer,  who  should  have  known  better, 
who  said  he  did  not  want  to  part  with  any  of  the  few 
letters  he  himself  had  received  from  Barrett,  would 
like,  for  an  unnamed  friend,  a  note  of  the  protagonist 
on  paper  of  The  Players  Club  and  signed  in  full ;  fail 
ing  that,  Barrett's  book-plate — if  autographed — would 
do  !  Unfortunately  there  was  sent,  to  the  unnamed 
friend  of  the  friend,  a  note,  consisting  of  a  line  or  two, 
accepting  an  invitation  to  some  little  festival,  before  it 
was  discovered  that  the  friend's  friend  was  a  man 
whom  the  sender  particularly  disliked  and  who  was  by 
no  means  a  favourite  with  Barrett.  It  may  be  added 
that  the  friend  of  the  friend  was  one  of  the  few  men  to 
say,  "Thank  you,  sir."  And  that  was  the  way  he 
was  found  out. 

The  reverse  of  these  pictures  is,  perhaps,  worth 
painting  here,  if  only  for  the  sake  of  the  moral  it 
teaches.  A  young  girl — she  said  she  was  a  young  girl — 
who  knew  where  she  lived  on  the  banks  of  the  Hudson 


298  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibran? 

and  did  not  neglect  to  put  the  address  on  record — 
had  begun,  in  her  humble  way,  a  collection  of  auto 
graph  notes  and  letters  of  literary  men.  Some  of  them, 
already  in  her  possession,  were  addressed  to  her  father  ; 
others  had  been  given  to  her  by  her  own  and  her 
father's  friends.  Would  the  present  Literary  Man 
kindly,  without  any  trouble  to  himself,  send  to  her,  in 
the  enclosed  stamped  envelope,  a  fragment  of  manu 
script,  or  a  line  or  two  of  his  own,  which  she  could  put 
into  the  little  book  she  prized  so  highly  ?  Of  course  he 
complied  ;  and  he  was  so  overwhelmed  with  surprise  at 
her  grateful  acknowledgment  that  he  felt  it  his  impera 
tive  duty  to  thank  her  for  thanking  him.  He  asked 
what  she  had  and  what  she  wanted.  She  forwarded 
her  modest  list,  and  from  his  own  accumulation — for 
he  keeps  everything  of  that  sort,  no  matter  how  unim 
portant  it  may  seem  to  him — he  was  able  to  give  her 
short,  impersonal,  notes  of  Mr.  Howells,  Mr.  Warner, 
Mr.  Aldrich,  Mr.  Dobson,  Mr.  Gosse,  Mr.  Stockton, 
and  their  peers,  in  each  of  which  was  nothing  that  the 
writer  would  not  be  willing  that  the  whole  world 
should  read.  And  thus  without  materially  impoverish 
ing  himself  he  was  enabled  to  enrich  her.  All  because 
she  said  "  Thank  you,  sir  !  " 

To  the  autograph  thief  may  be  applied  some  of  the 
epithets  bestowed  in  The  Book  Hunter,  upon  the  extra- 
illustrator  of  books.  The  Grangerite,  says  Burton, 
is  a  sort  of  literary  Attila,  or  Genghis  Khan,  who 
spreads  terror  and  ruin  around  him ;  a  monster  who 


An  Alphabet 
of  Celebrities 


OLIVER  HERFORD'S  DRAWING  IN  LAURENCE  MUTTON'S  COPY  OF 

"THE  JINGLE  BOOK" 


literary  attila  299 


makes  the  meat  he  feeds  on.  Attila,  it  will  be  remem 
bered,  a  king  of  the  Huns,  was  called  by  mediaeval 
writers  "  the  Scourge  of  God"  because  of  the  ruth 
less  and  expansive  destruction  wrought  by  his  arms  ; 
Genghis  Khan  was  a  Mongol  emperor,  who  slaugh 
tered  and  tortured  and  plundered  his  enemies  and 
sacked  and  burned  their  cities.  He  was  particularly 
distinguished  for  his  treacherous  atrocities  and  his 
thirst  for  blood  and  vengeance. 

None  but  the  honest,  conscientious  collector  knows 
of  the  ruin  and  terrors  spread  around  him  by  the  mon 
ster  who  steals  autographs,  or  of  the  ruthless  destruc 
tion  that  follows  in  the  wake  of  his  pen-knife  or  his 
scissors,  whether  he  pillages  for  the  sake  of  profit  or 
simply  from  the  spirit  of  secret  hoarding.  In  one  of 
the  large  hotels  in  New  York,  not  long  ago,  many  and 
grievous  were  the  complaints  made  to  the  manager,  to 
the  General  Post  Office  in  Washington,  to  the  local 
sub-station  on  the  next  block,  to  the  carriers,  and  even 
to  the  newspapers,  concerning  the  mysterious  disap 
pearance  of  important  missives  posted  in  the  house.  It 
was  noticed  that  they  were  all  from  the  pens  of  per 
sonages  of  consequence  in  the  political,  literary,  or  the 
atrical  world,  who  were  guests  of  the  establishment. 
And  finally,  when  detectives  were  employed  to  ferret 
out  the  matter,  it  was  discovered  that  an  Attila  of  a 
bell-boy  had  been  in  the  habit  of  appropriating  letters 
given  him  to  mail.  He  opened  the  envelopes;  bartered 
the  stamps  for  chewing-gum  or  cream  -soda;  and,  after 


300          Galfcs  in  a  Xibrarp 

destroying  the  body  of  the  documents,  he  made  a  com 
fortable  income  by  selling  the  signatures  to  a  not  very 
scrupulous  dealer  who  was  willing  to  give  a  fair  price 
for  "good  specimens "  of  the  sign-manual  of  Mr. 
Speaker  Reed,  of  Mr.  Anthony  Hope,  or  of  Miss  Ellen 
Terry. 

To  a  certain  semi-professional  club  to  which  he  be 
longed,  a  well-known  author  once  presented  a  complete 
set  of  his  printed  books,  writing  in  each  of  the  volumes 
his  own  name  wTith  an  appropriate  sentiment.  Shortly 
after  his  death,  when  the  literary  journals  were  full  of 
sketches  of  his  life,  appreciative  critiques  of  his  work, 
portraits  of  him  at  all  ages,  views  of  the  houses  in 
which  he  was  born  and  died,  fac-similes  of  his  most 
familiar  verses,  and  the  like,  the  librarian  of  the  certain 
club  found  that  some  still  unknown  Genghis  Khan,  in 
his  thirst  for  autographic  blood,  had  mutilated  many 
of  the  presentation  copies  by  cutting  out  the  sentiments 
and  the  signatures.  It  was  all  done,  evidently,  by  the 
same  ruthless,  vandal  hand  ;  for  the  instrument  used 
in  each  case  was  a  very  sharp  one,  and  it  was  applied, 
invariably,  in  the  same  expert  manner.  This  Mon 
golian,  it  is  to  be  hoped,  was  a  servant  of  the  in 
stitution,  not  a  member ;  although  club-waiters  as 
a  rule  are  not  particularly  skilful  in  such  matters ; 
they  rarely  carry  about  with  them  keen-cutting  blades, 
unless  they  are  negroes,  and  then  chiefly  for  attack 
and  defence  ;  they  seldom  collect  autographs  for  auto 
graphs'  sake ;  and  they  are  not  apt  to  value  the 


autographic  Brigandage       301 

signature  of  a  poet  more  highly  than  that  of  a  publican 
or  a  prize-fighter. 

From  the  alcoves  of  an  important  university  library 
has  disappeared  the  fly-leaf  of  a  biography  of  Oliver 
Cromwell  on  which  Thomas  Carlyle  had  seen  fit  to  put 
on  record  the  fact  that  it  had  belonged  to  him.  The 
signature  (not  a  very  rare  one),  without  the  book,  was 
perhaps  worth,  to  the  trade,  some  fifty  cents  ;  the  book 
(a  common-place  edition,  poorly  printed),  without  the 
signature,  was  perhaps  worth  to  the  trade  half  a  dollar; 
the  book,  with  the  signature,  was,  to  the  university 
which  owned  it,  absolutely  beyond  price. 

From  a  private  library  was  taken,  some  years  ago, 
an  especially-bound  copy  of  The  Prince  and  the  Pauper, 
with  a  peculiarly  affectionate,  Mark  Twainey  inscrip 
tion,  from  the  author  to  the  friend  for  whom  it  was 
bound  and  to  whom  it  was  given.  If  its  author  and  its 
former  owner  could  know  of  what  pleasure  and  benefit 
it  can  be  to  its  present  possessor,  who  cannot  exhibit 
it,  who  cannot  look  at  it,  except  in  secrecy,  who  can 
not  sell  it,  or  give  it  away — without  giving  himself 
away  with  it, — they  might  be  a  little  more  resigned  to 
the  ruin  and  terrors  he  spread. 

Perhaps  the  worst  case  of  autographic  brigandage  on 
record  was  displayed  in  the  conduct  of  a  young  relative 
of  a  well-known  artist.  The  artist,  a  man  of  unusually 
interesting  personality,  died,  one  day,  and  was  cre 
mated.  His  enterprising  young  relative  proposed  to 
prepare  a  memoir  of  the  painter,  and  he  wrote  to  all 


302  <Ialfcs  in  a 


the  painter's  friends  for  characteristic  letters,  not  too 
confidential,  which  might  be  published  in  the  volume 
and  might  show  to  the  world  what  manner  of  man  was 
the  deceased  in  his  private  as  well  as  in  his  professional 
character.  The  letters  were  freely  tendered  ;  the  vol 
ume  was  never  published  nor  written  ;  and  the  letters 
were  sold  for  the  benefit  of  the  young  relative.  One  of 
his  most  unfortunate  victims,  six  thousand  miles  away 
from  the  metropolis,  received  a  dealer's  catalogue,  ad 
vertising  a  number  of  "exceedingly  fine  examples" 
which  were  written  to  him  —  with  that  fact  mentioned, 
of  course  —  and  which  were  even  quoted  in  part.  Time 
and  space  did  not  permit  him  to  utter  a  public  dis 
claimer  ;  and  he  still  finds  himself  in  the  ignominious 
position  of  appearing  to  have  sold  for  money  what  no 
money  would  have  bought.  He  has  never  obtained 
redress.  And  yet  the  mediaeval  authors  looked  upon 
the  king  of  the  Huns  as  the  most  distinguished  of  the 
scourges  of  creation. 

The  truly  happy,  and,  perhaps,  the  only  proper 
holograph-maniac  is  the  fortunate  man  who  pilfers 
nothing,  who  petitions  for  nothing,  who  purchases 
nothing,  but  who  receives  in  a  natural  way,  and  who 
keeps  and  dearly  prizes,  what  no  money  can  buy,  what 
no  money  has  bought,  what  no  money  will  ever  buy, 
unless  his  heirs,  executors,  administrators,  or  assigns 
put  them  upon  the  market  long  after  they  have  lost  to 
him  their  earthly  charm  —  to  wit,  the  autographs  ad 
dressed  to  him,  or  written  for  him,  not  as  autographs 


IReal  {Treasures  303 

but   as   personal  expressions   of  good  fellowship  or 
good  will. 

Among  these  may  be  classed  Mr.  John  Fiske's  letters 
from  lyondon  in  which  he  tells  how  he  once  called  on 
the  Leweses,  at  the  Priory,  in  St.  John's  Wood,  and 
found  George  Bliot  sitting  on  the  floor — of  all  things — 
with  hammer  in  hand  and  a  mouth  full  of  tacks,  put 
ting  down  the  dining-room  carpet ;  and  how  lonely  Mr. 
Fiske  himself  would  have  been,  in  a  strange  city  with 
out  his  wife  and  his  children,  if  the  fellows  were  not 
good  to  him,  and  did  not  often  drop  in  at  his  lodgings 
near  the  British  Museum, — the  "  fellows"  being  Hux 
ley  and  Darwin  and  Spencer  and  Tyndall.  Then  there 
is  a  long  letter  from  John  Brougham,  giving  the  history 
of  his  first  play  at  his  first  theatre;  and  a  few  lines  from 
Mr.  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  saying:  "I  've  just  fin 
ished  The  Sister's  Tragedy,  which  I  think  will  like 
you";  and  a  note  from  Mr.  George  Bough  ton  illus 
trated  with  diagrams  of  pyramids,  showing  thereby 
how  much  more  sorry  he  was  to  be  out  when  you 
called  than  you  could  possibly  have  been  not  to  find 
him  at  home ;  and  a  note  from  Mr.  Edwin  A.  Abbey, 
signed  by  a  caricature  of  himself — all  teeth  and  all  eye 
glasses, — asking  one  to  dine — at  the  Star  and  Garter  at 
Richmond — to  celebrate  the  birthday  of  a  gentleman 
whose  name  is  not  mentioned,  but  who  is  represented 
in  a  clever  pictorial  way  as  a  personage  writing  words 
with  one  hand  and  catching  salmon  with  the  other, 
and  is  easily  recognised  as  William  Black.  Added  to 


304  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

these  there  may  be  little  poems  by  Mr.  Austin  Dobson, 
by  Mr.  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman,  by  Mr.  Thomas 
Nelson  Page,  all  saying — which  the  recipient  tries  to 
believe  to  be  true — how  much  they  like  him  ;  and  all 
written  on  the  fly-leaves  of  books  of  theirs,  sent  on  the 
day  of  publication.  And  then,  too,  are  -the  bits  of  sen 
timent,  the  scraps  of  original  verse,  with  all  sorts  of 
bad  and  almost  impossible  rhymes  on  one's  name,  and 
pretty  little  sketches  of  places  and  persons  and  things 
known  and  loved  for  their  associations'  sake,  put  into 
guest-books  or  birthday  books  by  Mrs.  Kate  Douglas 
Wiggin,  by  Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge,  by  Mrs.  Ruth 
McEnery  Stuart,  by  Mrs.  Custer,  by  Miss  Helen  Keller, 
by  Florence,  Booth,  Barrett,  Wallack,  by  Mr.  Frank 
Stockton,  by  Mr.  Blash field,  by  Mr.  Henry  M.  Bacon, 
by  Mr.  Beckwith,  by  Mr.  Vedder,  by  Mr.  Zorn — men 
and  women  whom  the  owner  of  the  books  likes  so 
much,  and  men  and  women  whose  friendship,  and  the 
expression  of  it,  no  money — of  any  amount — can  buy. 

That  money  might  have  bought  some  of  these  things 
has  been  shown  in  a  curious  and  gratifying  way  on 
several  interesting  occasions. 

One  morning  some  time  after  the  close  of  our  Civil 
War  there  call*<5  at  a  literary  workshop  in  New  York 
an  aged  lady,  Bearing  a  personal  letter  of  introduction 
from  Mr.  Bryant.  She  hesitated  to  occupy  any  valu 
able  time,  a*xi  she  then  proceeded  to  occupy  some 
sixty  minute  of  it  in  the  narration  of  her  troubles 
and  trials  during  the  late  conflict.  She  had  lived  on 


Comparative  IDalues  305 

the  borders ;  her  home  was  desolate ;  her  possessions 
were  scattered  and  lost ;  her  income  was  reduced  to  a 
pittance.  But,  by  the  financial  aid  of  the  ever-generous 
members  of  her  Guild-of-Letters,  so  prosperous  now  in 
the  North,  she  had  a  scheme  by  which  she  felt  assured 
she  could  not  only  help  her  neighbours  on  the  banks  of 
the  River  James, — and  incidentally  herself, — but  could 
do  great  service  to  American  letters,  the  country  over. 
The  present  member  of  her  guild  listened  as  patiently 
as  he  could  to  her  plan.  He  explained  to  her  that  he 
was  not  a  prosperous  author,  and  that  he  had  no  ac 
quaintance  with  authors  who  were  prosperous  in  that 
particular  way  ;  that  the  claims  upon  him  were  many 
and  great  and  more  than  he  could  meet ;  and  that  he 
must  be  forced,  with  no  little  natural  regret,  to  decline 
the  opportunity  to  subscribe,  which  she  had  so  kindly 
given  him.  However,  as  she  had  kept  a  cab  at  the 
door  from  eleven  to  twelve  of  the  clock,  at  a  dollar  an 
hour,  here  was,  if  she  would  condescend  to  accept  it,  a 
dollar-bill  to  cover  the  cost  of  her  entertaining  visit. 
She  took  the  money.  And  an  enthusiastic  collector 
offered  two  dollars  and  a  half  for  the  letter  from 
Bryant. 

A  friend  of  Irving' s  (then  Mr.  Irving,  not  Sir  Henry) 
was  lucky  enough  to  be  the  actor's  guest  some  years 
ago  at  a  breakfast  he  gave  at  Delmonico's  to  Edwin 
Booth.  With  the  others  present  at  the  symposium, 
this  lucky  friend  put  his  name  upon  a  menu-card  and 
passed  it  along  the  table.  It  came  back  to  him,  in  due 


306  Galfcs  in  a 


course,  with  the  signatures  of  the  host,  of  Mr.  White- 
law  Reid,  of  Mr.  Samuel  L,.  Clemens  (Mark  Twain), 
of  Mr.  Charles  Dudley  Warner,  of  Mr.  Thomas  Bailey 
Aldrich,  of  Mr.  Augustin  Daly,  of  Booth,  Barrett, 
Lester  Wallack,  John  McCullough,  Harry  Edwards, 
and  William  J.  Florence,  in  the  order  given.  Because, 
as  it  was  discovered  long  afterwards,  the  bit  of  paper 
contained  thirteen  names,  and  because  six  of  the  actors 
there  present  had  signed  it  in  succession,  and  had  all 
quitted  forever  the  stage  of  life,  a  fabulous  price  was 
offered  for  it  by  the  same  enthusiastic  collector,  who 
would  never  for  a  moment  have  thought  of  parting  with 
it  if  it  had  been  his  own  and  had  come  to  him  in  the 
same  direct  and  pathetic  way. 

Irving,  dining  in  a  New  York  house,  one  December 
night,  expressed  much  interest  in  certain  proofs  of  en 
gravings  of  Mr.  John  S.  Sargent's  Players  Club  por 
traits  of  Booth,  Barrett,  and  Mr.  Jefferson,  which  were 
hanging  in  the  hall.  His  host  saw  a  way  of  recipro 
cating  some  of  Irving'  s  many  acts  of  hospitality  and 
courtesy  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic  ;  and  he  had  a 
set  of  the  three  proofs  mounted  and  sent  to  Irving  as 
Christmas  cards.  The  morning  when  the  reply  came 
—  Irving  always  says  "Thank  you,  sir"  —  this  very 
same  enthusiastic  collector  was  sitting  at  the  recipient's 
breakfast  table,  and  he  was  shown  the  letter.  It  was 
a  four-page  epistle,  all  in  Irving's  handwriting  —  a  very 
unusual  performance  because  he  almost  invariably  dic 
tates  to  Mr.  Brain  Stoker,  his  manager,  or  to  his  secre- 


PART  OF  THE  ORIGINAL  MS.  OF      SHERIDAN'S  RIDE" 
Attached  to  the  sheet  is  a  knot  of  horaa-hair,  as  presented  in  the  reproduction 


Hn  Enthusiastic  Collector      307 

tary, — and  it  was  full  of  the  kindliest,  most  tenderly 
affectionate  words  of  appreciation  of  the  two  good 
friends — Booth  and  Barrett — whom  he  had  lost  by 
death,  and  of  the  good  friend  left  to  him — Mr.  Jefferson, 
— whom  he  hoped  might  long  be  spared  as  an  ornament 
and  shining  example  to  his  profession.  It  is  one  of  the 
best  "examples  "  of  Irving  extant,  for  the  reason  of  its 
manner  and  its  matter.  And  as  such  the  enthusiastic 
collector  offered  twenty-five  dollars  for  it  down  !  That 
same  morning's  mail  had  brought  the  bill  for  the  proofs 
— one  dollar  each.  And  thus,  in  his  efforts  to  get  even 
with  Irving,  the  donor  of  the  pictures  had  made  an  ap 
parent  pecuniary  profit  of  seven  hundred  per  centum  on 
the  investment.  But  no  man  can  ever  expect  to  get 
even  with  Irving. 

One  or  two  examples  of  a  sincere  appreciation  of 
autographs  in  humble  and  unexpected  corners  of  the 
world  may  be  cited  here.  The  recipient  of  a  post-office 
notice  that  a  foreign  book  from  an  unknown  source 
awaited  his  personal  application  and  the  payment  of 
legal  fees,  called  for  it  in  due  season.  At  the  clerk's 
window  he  remarked  that  he  was  willing  to  bet  fifty 
cents  that  the  book  was  not  worth  the  fifty  cents 
charged  for  it,  when  the  official  replied  that  he  would 
give  fifty  cents  for  the  wrapper.  The  piece  of  brown 
paper  contained,  in  his  own  handwriting,  the  name  of 
Henry  Irving.  How,  under  the  somewhat  anomalous 
circumstances,  it  was  recognized  as  genuine,  and  how  it 
was  recognized  at  all,  for  Irving' s  chirography,  while 


308  Galfcs  in  a  library 

"characteristic,"  is  never,  even  at  its  best,  very  legible, 
is  still  a  mystery. 

Opposite  the  Black  Jack  Tavern  in  Portsmouth 
Street,  near  Portugal  Street,  London,  stands  or  once 
stood  a  curious,  irregular  little  building  which  claimed 
to  be  "  The  Original  Old  Curiosity  Shop."  No  hint  is 
anywhere  given  in  the  book  itself,  as  to  the  exact  situ 
ation  of  the  home  of  the  Trent  family  or  even  as  to  the 
neighbourhood  in  which  the  Trents  lived.  But  the 
house  in  question  must  have  been  very  familiar  to 
Dickens,  lying,  as  it  does,  or  did,  in  the  direct  line  of 
his  many  walks  from  the  Strand  to  the  Lincoln's  Inn 
chambers  of  his  friend  John  Forster ;  in  which  cham 
bers,  by  the  way,  he  placed,  and  killed,  Mr.  Tulking- 
horn,  the  family  solicitor  of  the  Dedlocks.  If  there  is 
nothing  to  prove  that  it  was  the  dwelling-place  of  Little 
Nell,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  it  was  not ;  and  on 
the  strength  of  the  might-have-been  it  was  an  object  of 
no  little  interest  and  reverence  on  the  part  of  visitors 
to  London,  especially  of  visitors  from  the  United  States. 
Two  Americans  who  had  made  a  particular  study  of  the 
scenes  of  the  stories  of  Dickens,  who  knew,  or  thought 
they  knew,  Tom  All-Alone's,  the  dwelling  of  Bob 
Sawyer,  the  rooms  of  Mr.  Dorrit  in  the  Marshalsea, 
Tom  Pinch's  chambers  in  the  Temple,  and  many  more, 
knew  well  this  alleged  Old  Curiosity  Shop  ;  and  often 
did  they  pass  it  and  discuss  it  and  wonder  about  it, 
with  no  thought  of  entering  it  ever  occurring  to  them. 

At  last,  one  day  during  what  she  called  a  "  Dickens 


c.  y^,  ^  ii^Jic  1  s 


Vet  v.  .<_'  ^/    A  '-^^-•ut,}  -  1  v^t     (X^.-Gfj    <\_C*~-T 


v^     y      .  . 
/t  LA  .  /•       /t 


t^^w._ 

_ 

.  ......  __  —  ... 

MARK  TWAIN'S  PAGE  IN  THE  HUTTON  GUEST-BOOK 


a  2>icfcen$  pilgrimage         309 

Pilgrimage,"  they  showed  it  to  Miss  Mary  Anderson, 
then  playing  her  first  theatrical  engagement  in  L,on- 
don.  Without  a  moment's  hesitation  she  opened  the 
door  and  walked  in,  her  two  guides  following  meekly 
in  her  wake.  The  establishment  had  sunk  in  the  social 
and  mercantile  scale,  and  had  descended  to  the  depths 
of  the  rag-and-bottle  trade,  with  nothing  attractive  or 
romantic  in  its  interior  aspect.  The  present  occupant, 
an  aged  woman  typical  of  her  class  and  peculiarly 
typical  of  I^ondon,  received  her  visitors  cordially 
enough.  She  was  evidently  used  to  such  inspection — 
especially  on  the  part  of  Americans, — and  quite  as  evi 
dently  she  was  proud  of  her  surroundings,  and  of  the 
attention  paid  them.  She,  at  all  events,  believed  firmly 
in  the  authenticity  of  the  legend,  and  she  did  not  seem 
to  doubt  for  a  moment  that  she  was  the  direct  successor 
of  the  famous  curator  of  the  emporium.  She  exhibited 
in  a  cheerful,  chirpy  way,  the  little  that  was  to  be  seen, 
and  finally  she  led  her  visitors  into  the  sitting-room, 
which  she  assured  them  had  been  little  Nell's  own 
apartment.  Here,  the  hour  being  five  of  the  afternoon, 
she  produced  the  inevitable  cups,  caddy,  and  kettle, 
and  brewed  the  never-failing  tea.  She  and  Miss  Ander 
son  did  all  the  talking ;  and,  in  an  equally  marked 
manner,  they  showed  how  much  they  were  mutually 
impressed.  The  young  actress,  not  unknown  to  fame 
but  hitherto  unrecognised  by  her  new  acquaintance, 
told  who  she  was  and  asked  her  hostess  to  be  her  guest 
that  night  at  the  L,yceum  Theatre,  writing  out,  in  her 


310  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

big,  irregular,  scrawling  hand,  a  document  which  read: 
"  Pass  my  friend,  Mrs.  Betty  Higden  "  (that  was  not 
the  name,  but  it  is  the  name  by  which  Miss  Anderson 
always  speaks  of  her  to  this  day),  "Pass  my  friend,  Mrs. 
Betty  Higden,  and  party  to  the  stalls  to-night." 

The  pass  was  never  used.  A  year  or  two  later, 
making  another  "  Dickens  Pilgrimage,"  Miss  Ander 
son,  this  time  acting  herself  as  guide  to  an  especially 
conducted  party  of  her  countrymen  and  countrywomen, 
called  again  on  Mrs.  Higden,  and  found  the  paper, 
neatly  framed,  with  a  photograph  of  "Galatea,"  hang 
ing  in  the  place  of  honor  over  the  spot  where  is  sup 
posed  to  have  stood  little  Nell's  bed.  "  So  you  did  not 
come  to  see  the  play  after  all?"  she  said,  a  little  dis 
appointed.  "Oh,  yes  !  We  saw  the  pl'y.  But  when 
we  found  we  'd  'ave  to  give  h'up  the  h'order  or  give 
h'up  the  stalls,  we  give  h'up  the  stalls  and  kep  the 
h'order.  And  we  pied  h'our  w'y  into  the  pit !  " 

Miss  Anderson  declares  this  to  be  the  most  gratifying 
indirect  compliment  she  ever  received.  And  for  once, 
and  by  a  plain,  ignorant,  little  cockney-tradeswoman, 
in  a  very  humble  way  the  "  Thank  you  ! "  so  easily 
said  but  so  rarely  said,  was  said,  most  silently  but  most 
gracefully. 

Thank  you,  good  Mrs.  Higden,  for  saying  it ! 


CHAPTER  XII 

Mary  Anderson  in  London— Dean  Stanley — Westminster  Abbey 
and  the  Izaak  Walton  Tablet— Stratford-on-A von — William 
Winter — William  Black— The  Kinsmen. 

WHKN  Miss  Mary  Anderson  and  her  brother,  Mr. 
Joseph  Anderson,  were  in  London  for  the  first  time  in 
their  lives,  I  saw  much  of  them,  and  did  what  I  could 
to  help  them  in  a  social  way,  almost  perfect  strangers 
as  they  were  to  the  great  metropolis.  And  I  was, 
naturally,  deeply  interested  in  what  she  was  doing 
upon  the  stage.  I  had,  of  course,  a  "bone"  to  the 
Lyceum  Theatre  in  which  she  was  playing,  and  saw 
something  of  them  almost  every  day.  During  her  first 
engagement  in  "  Pygmalion  and  Galatea  "  I  was  living 
close  by  in  Craven  Street,  Strand,  busy  with  my  own 
work,  when  I  happened  to  mention  to  her  that  three 
of  my  mother's  sisters  and  the  husband  of  one  of 
them  were  coming  to  make  me  a  little  visit  on  their 
way  to  New  York  ;  and  that  consequently  for  a  week 
or  two  I  would  be  occupied  with  them.  Upon  their 
arrival  in  the  lodging-house,  they  were  met  by  a  note 
from  Miss  Anderson  asking  if  Miss  Scott,  to  whom  the 
letter  was  addressed,  not  to  me,  would  come  with  the 
other  Aunts  and  occupy  her  box  as  her  guest  on  some 

3" 


312  ftalfcs  in  a  librae? 

evening  which  they  were  to  specify.  They  were  old 
rather  than  elderly  ladies,  in  deep  mourning  for  the 
mother  who  had  lately  died,  and  most  emphatically 
they  were  non-theatre  goers.  I  question  if  any  one  of 
them  had  seen  the  inside  of  a  play-house  three  times  in 
her  life.  After  a  good  deal  of  hesitation,  they  accepted, 
and  went.  They  were  met  at  the  door  of  the  theatre 
with  a  great  deal  of  ceremony  by  Major  Griffin,  Miss 
Anderson's  step-father  and  manager;  and  they  were 
ushered  to  their  seats  in  the  box  that  had  been  placed 
at  their  disposal.  At  the  end  of  the  second  act  a  serv 
ant  appeared  with  ices,  with  Miss  Anderson's  compli 
ments  ;  Major  Griffin  called  once  or  twice  during  the 
evening  to  see  if  the  ladies  were  comfortable  and  enjoy 
ing  the  play;  and  from  where  we  sat — I  was  with  them, 
of  course — we  could  see  Miss  Anderson  in  the  wings, 
waiting  for  her  call ;  and  she  never  left  the  stage  or 
entered  it  without  some  little  smile  or  nod  of  recognition 
to  the  three  dear  old  ladies  who  were  entire  strangers 
to  her. 

When  the  curtain  was  finally  rung  down  and  we 
were  preparing  to  leave  the  house,  Major  Griffin  ap 
peared  again  and  said  that  Miss  Anderson  would  like 
very  much  to  meet  her  guests,  but,  as  she  could  not 
come  to  them,  would  they  waive  all  ceremony  and  come 
to  her  in  the  dressing-room.  To  go  behind  the  scenes, 
to  see  an  actress  in  her  war-paint,  was  something  that 
had  never  entered  their  wildest  dreams ;  but  they 
marched  bravely  on,  across  the  stage-entrance,  and 


MARY  ANDERSON,   WILLIAM   BLACK,    AND  JO  ANDERSON 


fin  tbe  Hbbe?  313 

were  met  by  the  Star  of  the  evening,  with  outstretched 
hand.  She  distinguished  one  of  them,  particular!)',  by 
kissing  her  cheek  and  saying: 

"  This  must  be  Aunt  Charlotte,  for  she  looks  so  like 
his  mother  ! ' ' 

These  words  quite  upset  Aunt  Charlotte,  and  the  rest 
of  my  mother's  sisters,  and  won  their  hearts.  They 
realised  that  Miss  Anderson  and  I  must  have  talked 
them  over  and  in  an  affectionate  way  ;  and  the  next 
morning,  without  saying  anything  to  each  other,  they 
marched  off  silently  and  alone  to  the  nearest  photo 
graph  shop,  to  buy  a  picture  of  Galatea. 

This  is  only  one  of  the  many  examples  of  Miss 
Anderson's  tact  and  sweetness  and  thoughtfulness  for 
others. 

Going  through  the  Abbey  of  Westminster  on  a  very 
memorable  occasion  with  Miss  Mary  Anderson  and  her 
brother,  under  the  escort  of  Dean  Stanley,  the  historian 
of  the  Minster,  he  showed  us  a  great  many  rare  and 
curious  things,  which  were  not  contained  in  his  own 
volume.  He  stopped  before  the  mural  tablet  to  Isaac 
Casaubon,  in  the  South  Transept,  and  said  : 

"  There  is  only  one  bit  of  desecration  of  the  Abbey 
that  I  am  disposed  to  forgive.  I  '11  show  it  to  you." 

And  he  laid  his  beautiful  fingers  in  a  caressing  way 
upon  the  monogram  initials  "  I.  W.,"  and  the  date 
"  1658,"  which  he  had  discovered  to  have  been  scratched 
there,  with  a  nail,  by  Izaak  Walton  himself.  This 
seemed  to  bring  me  as  near  to  Walton — always  dear  to 


3H  Galfcs  in  a  library 

me— as  I  had  ever  come.  The  Dean  was  kind  enough 
to  permit  me  to  have  a  tracing  made  of  the  letters  and 
the  figures,  though  such  things  were  against  the  rules 
of  the  institution. 

Izaak  Walton  had  confessed  the  deed  in  one  of  his 
letters,  and  the  gentle  prelate  told  us  that  on  discover 
ing  the  fact,  late  at  night,  he  could  not  rest  till  he 
had  proved  for  himself  that  the  marks  still  existed. 
And  with  a  lighted  candle  he  went  from  the  Deanery, 
in  the  silent  hours  of  the  morning,  to  satisfy  himself 
that  they  were  there. 

With  a  deep  and  affectionate  reverence  he  showed  us 
the  tomb  of  his  wife  ;  and  pointing  to  a  spot  in  the 
same  chapel,  he  said :  "In  the  natural  course  of  events 
you  young  people  will  come  here  some  day  and  find  me 
lying  there." 

And  there  he  lies.  I  never  saw  him  again.  But 
the  impression  he  made  upon  me  then,  as  before, 
was  that  of  a  character  unusually  gentle,  strong,  and 
sweet. 

I  went  that  same  year  from  Broadway,  in  Worcester 
shire,  to  Stratford,  to  attend  the  opening  of  the  Shake 
speare  Memorial  Theatre  in  the  town  of  Shakespeare's 
birth.  Miss  Anderson  was  playing  Rosalind  for  the 
first  time,  and  the  occasion  was  considered  a  wonderful 
one.  Low,  and  Archer,  and  Abbey,  and  Comyns  Carr, 
and  Frank  Millet,  and  Tadema,  and  all  the  artists  and 
dramatic  critics  in  England  were  present.  It  was  on  a 
Saturday  night ;  and  Miss  Anderson  and  her  company 


MONOGRAM,  "  I.  W.,"  IN  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY 


at  Stratfor^on^avon          315 

were  to  go  early  on  the  next  morning  to  Birmingham, 
where  she  was  to  play  on  the  Monday  evening.  After 
the  performance  and  long  after  midnight,  William 
Winter,  who  had  borrowed  the  keys  of  the  church, 
took  us  into  the  sacred  edifice  ;  and  there  we  had,  all 
alone  to  ourselves,  with  the  bright  full  moonlight  shin 
ing  through  the  stained  glass  windows,  the  resting- 
place  of  the  "  Immortal."  Winter  was  our  chaperone 
and  guide.  It  was  a  night  never  to  be  forgotten.  We 
had  no  business  there  ;  but  although  we  realised  that, 
we  did  not  care. 

The  next  day  Mr.  Winter  carried  us  about  the  Shake 
spearian  country,  showing  us  Ann  Hathaway's  cot 
tage;  quoting: 

Ann  Hathaway, 
She  hath  a  way 
To  make  men  say, 
"To  be  Heaven's  self  Ann  hath  a  way  "; 

taking  us  to  Charlecote  Park ;  showing  us  the  green 
wood  tree  ;  asking  us  to  stop  and  ' '  listen  to  the  sweet 
bird's  note,  who  tuned  his  merry  throat";  "  Come 
hither,  come  hither,  here  shall  he  see  no  enemy  but 
winter  and  rough  weather";  and  the  spot  on  which 
"  the  wild  thyme  grew."  Finally,  when  he  left  us  at 
the  door  of  our  own  hotel,  Mr.  Malcom  Bell,  an  Eng 
lishman,  remarked: 

"  I  don't  know  who  this  Winter  of  yours  is,  but  he 
is  certainly  a  man  of  wonderful  Shakesperience  ! ' ' 

It  was  a  year  later  at  Stratford  (1883)  that  we  made 


316  Galfcs  in  a  Xibran? 

William  Black  a  Kinsman.  The  occasion  was  a  fare 
well  dinner  in  the  Shakespeare  Inn  to  William  M. 
L,affan,  who  was  returning  to  America  after  some 
years'  residence  in  England  as  the  London  representa 
tive  of  the  New  York  Sun  ;  and  the  party  consisted  of 
Abbey,  Parsons,  Millet,  Laffan,  Boughton,  Black,  and 
myself. 

The  printed  bill  of  fare  at  my  plate,  which  I  still  pre 
serve  and  cherish,  was  illuminated  by  original  signed 
pencil  drawings  of  the  artists  present.  Mr.  Boughton 
illustrated  the  soup,  Mr.  Abbey  the  fish,  Mr.  Laffan 
the  cutlets,  Mr.  Millet  the  salad  and  game,  Mr.  Par 
sons  the  joint,  and  Mr.  Black  added  to  the  value  of  the 
document  by  a  most  wonderful  landscape,  under  which 
he  wrote  that  it  was  done  by  that  "  'ere  Crow"  (Eyre 
Crowe  being  a  well-known  British  painter  not  present 
but  an  intimate  friend  of  us  all)  or  "Corot,"  —  William 
Black. 

Black's  drawing  as  a  drawing  is  of  but  little  value  as 
a  work  of  art.  But  to  his  many  admirers  in  another 
line  it  cannot  fail  to  be  of  interest  as  perhaps  the  only 
example  in  existence  of  his  work  as  a  draughtsman. 

The  story  of  this  dinner  found  its  way  into  the  British 
and  American  press  and,  shortly  after,  returning  to 
America  on  one  of  the  Cunard  steamers,  I  was  accosted 
by  an  enthusiastic  young  lady  who  was  very  anxious 
to  meet  me  and  so  expressed  herself. 

She  said  that  she  was  familiar  with  everything  I  had 
done  and  admired  it,  and  then  she  asked  me,  in  the 


IRinemen  3>inner$  317 

most  impressive  voice,  what  I  was  doing  now.  Seeing 
my  name  among  a  group  of  painters,  she  had  naturally 
concluded  that  I  belonged  to  that  profession.  Such,  I 
felt,  was  fame  ! 

Another  unusual  menu  card  celebrated  one  of  the 
earliest  international  feasts  of  this  organisation.  It  was 
a  composite  drawing,  Mr.  Boughton  making  a  punch 
bowl  into  which  John  Bull,  by  du  Maurier,  and  Brother 
Jonathan,  by  E.  A.  Abbey,  are  pouring  the  wine.  On 
the  bottom  are  a  series  of  bottles  and  a  box  of  cigars, 
the  work  of  L,inley  Sambourne  ;  while  at  the  top,  in  an 
illuminated  scroll,  are  the  words,  "The  Kinsmen," 
from  the  hand  of  Alfred  Parsons.  The  original  compo 
sition,  in  pen  and  ink,  bears  in  each  case  upon  his  own 
production  the  autograph  of  the  artist.  The  document 
coming,  somehow,  into  the  hands  of  Osgood,  was  be 
queathed  to  me. 

William  Black  was  an  interesting  little  man  with 
dark  hair,  a  long  moustache,  very  red  and  weather- 
beaten  cheeks,  and  a  marked  Scottish  accent.  He  was 
shy  in  the  presence  of  strangers — particularly  women, 
—  but  was  a  warm  and  faithful  friend.  He  lived  in 
Brighton,  where  he  had  a  large  study  on  the  top  of  his 
house,  facing  the  ocean.  Here  he  worked  hard,  writing 
many  hundred  words  a  day,  in  a  very  fine  hand  and  on 
small  sheets  of  paper.  His  manuscript  is  legible  and 
unusually  free  from  erasures  or  corrections.  The 
manuscript  of  each  novel  was  bound  separately  and 
was  given  to  his  children,  the  letterpress  copy  going 


318  Galfes  in  a  Xibrar\> 

to  the  printers.  When  he  was  in  the  throes  of  compo 
sition  he  was  never  interrupted  by  any  member  of  his 
household  on  any  account,  and  no  one  ever  ascended 
to  the  floor  which  he  had  taken  for  his  own. 

He  also  had  a  suite  of  apartments  at  the  foot  of  Buck 
ingham  Street,  Strand,  from  the  windows  of  which  he 
had  a  glorious  view  of  the  Thames,  up  and  down,  and 
as  the  street  is  not  a  thoroughfare  he  had  absolute 
quiet.  The  house  is  a  very  old  one ;  it  is  but  a  few 
feet  from  Inigo  Jones's  picturesque  York  Water-Gate  ; 
it  is  built  upon  the  site  of  York  House  in  which  Bacon 
was  born  ;  and  the  present  structure  is  now  famous  as 
the  one-time  residence  of  Peter  the  Great.  Black's 
rooms  have  an  interesting  history  of  their  own.  They 
were  occupied  for  some  time  by  Clarkson  Stanfield,  and 
they  were  the  gathering- place  of  all  the  bright  men  of 
his  particular  set.  Dickens  was  his  frequent  guest 
then,  and  he  gave  the  chambers  to  "  David  Copper- 
field."  Here  David  entertained  Traddles,  the  Micaw- 
bers,  Mr.  Dick,  and  once — very  much  against  his  will 
— Uriah  Heep,  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  slept  all 
night  upon  the  sofa.  And  here  ' '  Trotwood ' '  gave  that 
famous  and  disastrous  dinner  party  to  Steerforth  which 
was  broken  up  by  somebody  falling  down-stairs, — that 
somebody,  as  Trotwood  realised  afterwards,  being  Trot- 
wood  himself, — and  which  ended  by  Trotwood  being 
disgraced  in  Dora's  eyes  by  a  drunken  exhibition  in 
the  theatre.  Black  put  George  Brand,  the  hero  of 
Sunrise,  in  the  same  apartments  at  No.  15  Buckingham 


William  ffilacfc  319 

Street.  He  was  not  very  fond  of  the  association  of  the 
rooms  with  Peter  the  Great,  but  cared  very  much  to 
tell  his  friends  that  Samuel  Pepys  lived  across  the  way, 
that  David  Hume,  and  Rousseau,  and  Henderson  the 
actor,  and  Etty  the  Royal  Academician  had  been  his 
neighbours  in  the  little  street,  and  that  Smollett's 
* '  Strap ' '  was  the  keeper  of  a  lodging-house  not  very 
far  away, — all  in  the  broadest  Scotch  I  think  I  ever 
heard,  even  in  the  Highlands ;  and  he  loved  his  Scot 
land  dearly. 

Black  was  an  enthusiastic  fisherman  and  yachtsman  ; 
he  spent  his  holidays  in  the  Highlands  or  on  the  water. 
Many  of  the  salmon  killed  by  his  heroes  were  captured 
on  his  own  hooks  ;  he  had  trod  his  White  Heather;  he 
had  sailed  his  White  Wings ;  and  The  Strange  Adven 
tures  of  a  Phaeton  and  The  House  Boat  are  based  upon  his 
own  experiences,  although  the  "  Queen  Titania"  who 
so  often  figures  as  the  author's  wife  is  by  no  means, 
either  physically  or  mentally,  a  portrait  of  Mrs.  Black. 

My  first  meeting  with  William  Black  was  during  his 
visit  to  America  in  the  middle  seventies,  and  it  was 
pleasantly  and  peculiarly  accidental.  I  received  at  the 
Arcadian  Club  one  day  a  letter  from  Mr.  Edmund 
Clarence  Stedman,  written  in  the  third  person,  asking 
Mr.  Hutton  to  meet  the  Scottish  novelist  at  a  supper  to 
the  Century  Club,  then,  of  course,  in  the  old  building 
in  Fifteenth  Street.  I  was  much  gratified  and  not  a 
little  surprised,  for  my  acquaintance  at  that  time  with 
Mr.  Stedman  was  very  slight.  I  was  only  trying  my 


320  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

'prentice  hand  in  journalism, — had  made  no  mark  what 
ever, — and  could  not  understand  how  I  should  be  se 
lected  for  such  an  honour.  I  was  still  more  surprised 
when  I  discovered  the  men  by  whom  I  was  surrounded: 
Bryant,  Parke  Godwin,  Stoddard,  Huntington,  Win. 
H.  Appleton,  Joseph  W.  Harper,  Bayard  Taylor,  and 
their  peers  ;  and  I  wondered  if  among  such  big  guns  a 
pocket-pistol  fire- cracker  like  me  was  expected  to  let 
himself  off.  I  said  little,  but  I  listened  ;  and,  up  to 
that  period,  it  was  certainly  the  night  of  my  life. 

Not  till  many  years  afterwards  did  I  discover  that  the 
letter  which  I  had  found  in  the  /^box  at  the  club,  was 
intended  for  Mr.  Joseph  Hatton,  who,  naturally,  never 
received  it.  Stedman  would  seem  to  have  understood 
matters  at  a  glance,  and  he  was,  of  course,  too  much  of 
a  gentleman  to  let  me  realise  for  a  moment  that  I  was 
there  under  false  pretences,  though  of  course  through 
no  fault  of  my  own.  The  joke  was  on  Hatton,  and  he 
appreciated  it.  He  calls  me  "  Hatton-Hutton  "  to  this 
day,  addresses  me  as  his  "  Dear  Joseph,"  and  always 
signs  himself ' '  Laurence. ' '  It  was  on  that  evening,  by 
the  way,  during  the  very  post-prandial  remarks,  that 
one  gentleman  spoke  most  feelingly  and  admiringly  and 
affectionately  of  the  guest  of  the  evening  as  the  author 
of  Lorna  Doone,  dwelling  chiefly  upon  the  wonderful 
merits  of  that  particular  work  of  the  man  whom  they 
had  gathered  to  meet  and  to  greet.  This  caused  some 
body  to  say  in  an  undertone  that  what  we  wanted  was 
a  little  less  Blackmore  and  a  little  more  Black. 


WILLIAM    BLACK'S    ROOM 


Ibis  3fa\>orite  IRovel  321 

Some  time  afterwards  Black  and  I  were  together  for 
six  weeks  at  Stratford  while  he  was  writing  his  Judith 
Shakespeare,  Abbey  making  the  illustrations.  Abbey 
frequently,  in  the  absence  of  a  professional  model,  drew 
me  as  all  sorts  of  persons  and  in  all  sorts  of  shapes  and 
places ;  and  on  one  occasion  I  may  be  seen  with  a 
smooth  face  reading  the  Bible  at  family  worship,  and 
on  another  with  myself  in  a  beard.  When  the  day's 
work  was  over  in  Stratford,  during  that  autumn  of 
1883,  we  tramped  for  miles  in  all  directions,  coming 
home  to  late  dinners  and  to  good  talk.  Black  put  a 
great  deal  of  care  and  thought  into  his  Judith  Shake 
speare.  It  was,  perhaps,  by  him,  the  best  liked  of  all 
the  novels  he  had  written,  and  he  was  bitterly  disap 
pointed  that  the  world  who  read  him  did  not  regard  it 
in  the  same  light.  Although  he< never  said  so,  I  have 
always  felt  that  this  particular  romance  was  inspired  by 
the  remark  of  Carlyle  to  Black  once  :  * '  You  have  done 
good  things  which  are  light,  my  man,  why  don't  you 
do  something  serious  ?  "  or  words  to  that  effect. 

During  the  succeeding  winter  I  received  from  William 
Black  the  following  letters: 

"  PASTON  HOUSE,  PASTON  PI,ACB, 

"  BRIGHTON,  Oct.  8. 
"  MY  DEAR  HuTTON  : 

"  Thank  you  very  much  for  the  '  L,iterary  Notes.'  I 
am  glad  you  like  Donald  Ross.  But  you  don't  seriously 
imagine  that  I  set  to  work  to  write  a  novel  in  reply  to 
the  trivial  trash  of  that  ill-conditioned  Yankee  tourist? 


322  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar\> 

' '  I  was  about  to  write  to  you  in  any  case.  Do  you 
remember  my  asking  you  about  the  games  played  by 
the  New  York  street- Arabs,  and  your  saying  that  Mrs. 
Hutton  was  an  authority  on  that  subject?  I  wonder  if 
she  would  be  so  very  kind  as  to  tell  me  whether  there  is 
a  game  or  dance  of  distinctly  American  origin  that  the 
children  have.  The  '  Oats-pease-beans '  that  you  men 
tioned  is  merely  the  old  English  '  Oats  and  Beans  and 
Barley ' — as  familiar  as  '  Round  about  the  Mulberry 
Bush  '  or  '  Mary-Ma-Tanzie '  (Mary  May  Dance).  It 
would  be  most  interesting  to  know  if  the  American 
children  had  invented  for  themselves  something  like 
'  Poor  Mary  lies  a-dying '  or  '  Three  Dukes  a-riding ' ; 
but  it  is  hardly  likely:  these  things  are  handed  down 
from  the  dark  backward  and  abysm  of  time,  etc. 

"WILLIAM  BLACK." 

"  PASTON  HOUSE,  PASTON  PI,ACE, 

"  BRIGHTON,  Nov.  i. 
"  MY  DEAR  HUTTON  : 

11  Thank  you  very  much  for  your  letter  and  all  the 
information  contained  in  its  enclosures — though  I  am 
afraid  there  is  not  much  resemblance  between  the 
house-boat  described  by  your  correspondent  and  the 
little  floating  palaces  of  the  Thames.  I  did  not  happen 
to  see  what  you  said  about  the  Adventures  \The  Ad 
ventures  of  a  House  Boat~\.  I  presume  you  know  that 
your  section  of  Harper's  Magazine  doesn't  appear  in 
the  English  edition. 

'*  Yes,  that  was  rather  a  merry  time  at  Stratford. 


H  pretty  flncibent  323 

My  wife  and  I  are  just  back  from  a  more  soberly  gay 
week  in  Dublin  which  we  spent  with  Miss  Anderson 
and  her  brother,  to  bid  them  good-bye.  You  should 
have  witnessed  a  pretty  incident  that  occurred  on  one 
of  these  evenings  in  The  Winter's  Tale.  An  ancient 
and  venerable  shepherd  made  his  appearance  in  the 
Pastoral  Scene  ;  and  the  youthful  Perdita  was  so  kind 
as  to  come  forward  and  present  the  poor  old  man  with 
a  cake  surrounded  by  laurel.  What  significance  there 
was  about  his  taking  the  cake  was  probably  not  guessed 
at  by  the  audience  who  only  saw  an  act  of  compassion 
and  consideration.  As  to  the  identity  of  the  ancient 
shepherd?— but  hush  I1  .  .  ." 

"  March  20. 
"  MY  DKAR  HUTTON  I 

"  Had  I  learned  sooner  of  your  marriage  I  would 
have  sent  my  congratulations  at  the  time  ;  but  I  sup 
pose  the  happy  event  has  not  yet  lost  all  the  charm  of 
novelty.  I  thought  there  must  be  something  of  the 
kind  in  the  wind,  from  the  demureness  of  your  be 
haviour  at  Stratford  (which,  by  the  way,  quite  pre 
pared  me  for  finding  you  seated  at  a  Bible  reading  in  a 
recent  Harper 's  illustration).  I  am  sure  you  will  be 
glad  to  know  that  your  friends  over  here  are  much 
pleased  at  the  step  you  have  taken ;  and  hope  that  it 
will  have  an  educational  effect  on  your  character,  etc. 

"  WIUJAM  BLACK." 

!The  ancient  shepherd  was,  of  course,  Black  himself,  making 
his  d&but  among  the  supernumeraries  of  the  cast. 


324  Galfcs  in  a  %ibran? 


CUJB,  May  16. 
.     .     .     Very  glad  to  hear  you  are  coming  over  ; 
there  's  a  powerful  American  contingent  here  at  present. 
I  dined  with  Osgood,  Laffan,  Abbey,  Brisbane,  and  a 
lot  of  them  last  night. 

"  Miss  Anderson  is  slowly  getting  better,  but  she  has 
to  take  great  care.  She  sees  hardly  anybody;  does  not 
read  nor  write  ;  but  she  goes  out  for  drives  and  walks, 
and  the  spring  weather  is  just  now  simply  delightful. 
By  and  by  when  Jo  and  Gertrude  have  fixed  on  a  house 
[Jo  Anderson  had  married  Gertrude,  the  daughter  of 
Lawrence  Barrett]  she  will  live  with  them.  She  is  in 
capital  spirits,  but  of  course  has  to  avoid  the  least  ex 
citement  for  fear  of  bringing  back  another  attack  of  the 
nervous  prostration.  And  thank  you  for  the  Harper. 
By  the  way,  why  does  n't  the  American  Harper  wear 
an  outer  garment  more  nearly  suited  to  the  English 
one  ?  —  the  latter  being  more  cheerful. 

"  WIUJAM  BLACK." 

"June  3,  BRIGHTON. 
"  MY  DEAR  HUTTON  : 

'  '  If  you  have  now  emerged  from  that  Slough  of 
Despond  in  which  all  No  45  Albemarle  Street  [Lon 
don]  seemed  to  have  got  sunk  the  other  morning,  I 
hope  you  will  reconsider  your  decision  about  Sunday 
and  come  down  with  the  two  boys.  It  will  be  quite  as 
much  rest  for  you  as  remaining  in  London  —  and  you 
will  get  a  breath  of  sea  air  as  well. 

11  There  ain't  no  formalities  about  this  here  mansion; 


IRinsmen  325 


so  even  if  those  mysterious  shirts  have  not  turned  up, 
you  may  put  aside  that  consideration.  I  do  hope  you 
will  come.  James  will  bring  you  down  and  take  you 
back,  either  the  same  night  or  the  next  morning, 
whichever  is  the  most  agreeable  to  you  all.  Which  we 
should  prefer  I  need  not  say. 

"  Yours  sincerely, 

"  WIIJJAM  BI^ACK." 

The  initial  idea  of  "  The  Kinsman  "  was  Lawrence 
Barrett's  ;  the  name  was  an  inspiration  of  my  own. 
The  actor  had  long  contemplated  the  foundation  of  a 
little  club  in  this  country  upon  the  lines  of  the  '  '  Green 
Room  "  or  the  "  Beefsteak  "  in  London,  to  which  none 
but  professionals  should  be  admitted  and  only  those  of 
the  right  sort.  He  wanted  to  bring  together  the 
players,  the  writers,  the  sculptors,  the  painters,  into 
some  simple  organisation  which  should  be  select  and 
fraternal.  He,  Abbey,  Laffan,  Millet,  and  Brander 
Matthews,  with  their  wives,  —  such  of  them  as  had 
wives,  —  chanced  to  gather  in  my  house  in  the  early 
part  of  1882  ;  and  the  scheme  was  then  and  there  dis 
cussed  and  endorsed,  but  without  coming  to  any  definite 
conclusion.  Finally,  Matthews  suggested  that  we  ad 
journ  to  dine  with  him  at  the  Florence  House  a  few 
evenings  later  ;  and  there,  about  a  round  table,  the 
unique  little  society  was  formally  organised.  There 
were  to  be  no  dues,  no  fees,  no  club-house,  no  con 
stitution,  no  by-laws,  no  officers,  '  '  no  nothing  '  '  but 


326  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

good  fellowship  and  good  times.  We  were  to  break 
fast,  or  dine,  or  lunch,  or  sup,  together ;  each  member 
was  to  bring  to  each  symposium  a  guest  of  his  own 
choosing  and  of  his  own  profession,  whom  he  felt  would 
be  acceptable  to  the  other  members, — the  simple  pres 
ence  of  such  a  guest  making  him  a  member  of  the  club 
itself  without  any  other  form  of  choice  or  ballot ;  and  in 
this  way  was  the  society  to  be  increased  with  no  limit 
except  that  of  the  proper  fitness  of  congeniality  and 
talent.  All  sorts  of  names  were  suggested  for  the 
organisation,  but  none  of  them  seemed  suitable  or  suffi 
ciently  comprehensive  until  Barrett,  in  a  neat  little 
speech,  alluded  to  the  "  amiable  and  convivial  associa 
tion  of  the  kindred  arts  about  our  simple  board."  And 
that  gave  me  the  cue  ;  "  Kinsmen,  then,  let  us  be  !  " 
And  "  Kinsmen  "  we  are  to  this  day. 

The  death  of  my  mother  a  few  weeks  later,  and  a 
general  separation  of  all  parties  concerned  for  many 
months,  postponed  all  further  action  until  the  next 
year,  when  in  March  (1883)  the  second  meeting  of  the 
Kinsmen  was  held  at  a  dinner  in  my  house.  Bar 
rett  brought  Julian  Hawthorne,  in  the  absence  of  Booth 
and  Jefferson,  who  were  travelling  and  far  away;  Mat 
thews  brought  H.  C.  Bunner ;  Millet  brought  Klihu 
Vedder  ;  L,affan  and  Abbey  were  over  the  water ;  and 
my  guest  was  Samuel  L.  Clemens — otherwise,  Mark 
Twain.  The  breaking  of  bread  and  sipping  of  beer 
and  claret  was  their  only  initiation,  and  everything 
was  going  on  beautifully  and  harmoniously,  when  a 


l^n+t 
ffku*  ,  Ji  ' 


i.Ct. 


0   uM-   fcrx 


**" 


, 

f 


ROSE  MEINIE,"  WRITTEN  BY  WILLIAM  BLACK 


Hn  1fln!m>!teb  flfeember        327 

cab  brought  J.  R.  Osgood  to  the  door  from  the  Grand 
Central  Station.  He  was  uninvited  and  unexpected, 
and  he  was  given  to  understand  that  he  could  dine  at 
the  sideboard  or  at  the  mantel-piece  or  at  a  little  table 
near  the  window,  but  that  this  was  a  private  and  par 
ticular  feast  to  which,  unfortunately,  as  only  a  pub 
lisher  and  a  friend,  he  was  not  eligible.  He  contended 
that  he  was  eligible  to  anything,  that  we  were  all  his 
kinsmen  not  once  removed,  that  he  had  been  an  uncle 
if  not  a  father  to  every  one  of  us,  he  drank  out  of  some 
body's  tumbler,  ate  off  of  somebody's  plate,  sat  on  the 
arm  of  somebody's  chair,  and  before  we  knew  it  or 
could  help  ourselves  —  even  if  we  had  wanted  to  — 
Osgood  was  a  Kinsman  in  good  standing  forever. 
And  no  more  enthusiastic  Kinsman  ever  lived.  He 
entered  into  the  spirit  of  the  thing  so  thoroughly, 
made  so  many  suggestions,  had  so  much  to  say  about 
it,  that  finally  Clemens  rose  and  in  a  most  serious  way 
observed  that  he  had  been  so  much  impressed  by  the 
remarkable  eloquence  and  flood  of  advice,  expostula 
tion,  exhortation,  admonition,  and  guidance,  which 
had  come  from  the  lips  of  the  youngest  member  present 
— the  member  of  about  half  an  hour — that  he  felt  we 
must  be  unanimous  in  the  sentiment  that  the  name  of 
the  Club  should  be  changed  at  once,  and  that  in  future 
it  should  be  called  "  The  Osgood  Club."  He  begged 
to  put  that  as  a  motion,  and  to  ask,  nay,  to  urge,  with 
all  Ihe  native  force  of  which  he  was  capable  and  from 
*"iie  bottom  of  his  heart,  that  it  be  carried  viva  voce. 


328  Galfcs  in  a  Xibran? 

11  This  has  got  to  be  '  The  Osgood  Club  '  !  "  Osgood 
was  comparatively  silent  for  the  half  hour  which 
followed. 

The  next  gathering  of  the  Kinsmen  was  held  at 
the  Blue  Posts  Tavern  in  London,  in  June  of  the  same 
year.  Laffan,  Osgood,  Matthews,  Abbey,  and  I,  institu 
ted  there  and  then  the  initial  English  chapter.  The  new 
members  were  Comyns  Carr,  Clarence  King,  Andrew 
Lang,  Gosse,  Parsons,  George  Boughton,  Dobson, 
Linley  Sambourne,  and  Randolph  Caldecott,  all  of 
whom  entered  heartily  into  the  spirit  of  the  thing  and 
in  later  years  added  to  their  number  such  men  as  du 
Maurier,  Luke  Fields,  Tadema,  William  Podgett, 
Harold  Frederic,  Lionel  Robertson,  Burnand,  Anstey, 
Guthrie,  Collin,  Hunter,  Frederick  McMillan,  John 
Hare,  Anthony  Hope  Hawkins,  Orchardson,  Pinero, 
Forbes  Robertson,  Brain  Stoker. 

Irving,  Jefferson, Gilder,  and  George  Parsons  Lathrop 
were  gathered  into  the  fold  at  a  breakfast  at  the  Bruns 
wick,  New  York,  in  November,  1893  »  Irving  shortly 
afterwards  presented  each  and  every  one  of  his  Kins 
men  with  a  perpetual  free  pass  to  any  theatre  in 
which  he  may  be  playing  at  any  time.  This  pass  is  in 
the  form  of  an  ivory  disk,  upon  one  side  of  which  is 
engraved  the  words  "  Lyceum  Theatre,"  with  the 
autograph  of  "  Henry  Irving"  in  fac-simile.  On  the 
other  side  is  engraved  the  name  of  the  Kinsman  whose 
especial  property  it  is.  It  is  called  a  "  bone,"  from  the 
fact  that  in  the  early  days  of  the  British  drama  admis- 


DRAWING  BY  CALDECOTT 


H  Cre&itable  list  329 

sion  checks  were  made  of  that  material,  and  to  be  on 
the  free  list  at  any  theatre  there  to  this  day  is  expressed 
in  the  terms  of  the  profession  as  "  having  a  bone." 

In  the  spring  of  1884,  Edwin  Booth  became  a 
Kinsman, —  in  New  York, —  and  he  always  regretted 
that  he  was  not  the  possessor  of  a  "bone."  With 
him  .that  night  were  initiated  Howells,  Swain  Gif- 
ford,  William  Baird,  John  A.  Mitchell,  and  Dudley 
Warner.  Our  British  Kinsmen  made  Thomas  B.  Al- 
drich  a  Kinsman  at  the  Saville  Club  in  L,ondon  in 
1884,  and  we  initiated  the  international  chapter  by 
electing  John  L,.  Toole  at  The  Players  in  New  York 
in  1894,  adding  to  our  number  at  the  time,  John  Drew, 
Thomas  Nelson  Page,  Augustus  Saint-Gaudens,  K.  C. 
Stedman,  Stanford  White,  Francis  Wilson,  and  the 
Rev.  Joseph  Twitchell.  Among  the  members  whose 
names  I  have  not  recorded,  are  Charles  Fairchild,  Bret 
Harte,  Fitzgibbon,  Henry  James,  John  S.  Sargent,  and 
David  Murray. 

During  our  existence  we  have  lost  among  others  by 
death:  Lawrence  Barrett,  Edwin  Booth,  Caldecott, 
Osgood,  T.  F.  Bayard,  William  Black,  H.  C.  Bunner, 
Harold  Frederic,  George  du  Maurier,  L,ocker-L,amp- 
son,  George  Parsons  I,athrop,  Sir  Arthur  Sullivan,  Bret 
Harte,  Clarence  King,  and  Charles  Dudley  Warner: 
and  surely  the  roll  of  the .  Kinsmen  is  as  creditable 
a  list  of  clever  and  good  fellows  as  the  history  of 
modern  clubs  can  show. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Alma  Tadetna— George  du  Maurier — Charles  Reade — George 
Eliot — Swinburne — Joaquin  Miller  in  England — L/ocker- 
Lampson— John  Fiske— James  Russell  Lowell. 

MRS.  HUTTON'S  first  meeting  with  the  Tademas 
came  very  near  proving  a  serio-comic  tragedy.  We 
were  spending  the  summer  of  1885  in  Broadway, 
Worcestershire,  England,  at  The  Lygon  Arms,  the 
leading  inn  of  the  place.  The  Frank  D.  Millets,  then 
living  in  Broadway,  had  entertained  us  on  many  occa 
sions  and  Mrs.  Hutton  felt  that  it  was  our  place  and 
our  privilege  to  reciprocate  on  a  certain  Saturday,  the 
8th  of  August.  The  Millets,  E.  A.  Abbey,  Alfred 
Parsons,  and  others  of  their  friends  and  ours,  were  to 
dine  with  us  that  night.  Great  preparations  had  been 
made  by  the  hostess  of  the  evening,  when  Mrs.  Millet 
came  in  on  Saturday  morning  to  say  that  a  telegram 
had  just  reached  them  announcing  that  Tadema,  Mrs. 
Tadema,  their  daughter,  and  Mrs.  Williams,  Mrs. 
Tadeina's  sister,  were  coming  from  Evesham  to  spend 
with  the  Millets  the  week-end,  and  would  Mrs.  Hutton 
forego  her  dinner,  in  the  circumstances,  and  dine  with 
the  Millets  instead,  to  meet  the  Tademas  ?  Mrs.  Hut- 
ton  insisted  upon  her  own  party  :  her  husband,  not 

330 


THE  KINSMEN  "BONE" 


THE   KINSMEN    "BONE"   (REVERSE  SIDE) 


Coincidence  331 


exactly  understanding  why,  but  like  a  good  husband  — 
although  a  new  one  —  willing  to  submit  to  the  rule  of 
the  better  half.  The  result  was  that  the  Millets  and 
their  guests  appeared  in  the  Huttons'  apartment  at  the 
proper  time.  Hutton  himself,  in  his  innocence,  was 
overwhelmed  when  his  attention  was  called  to  sundry 
bottles  of  champagne  being  iced  in  his  hip-tub,  in  an 
ante-  room  to  the  apartment,  Mr.  Millet  remarking: 

"  Can  such  things  be  !  This  is  the  first  time  in  all 
our  experiences  in  Broadway  that  we  have  had  any 
thing  to  drink  of  more  importance  than  vin  ordinaire." 

At  the  proper  moment  the  champagne  was  uncorked 
with  a  great  deal  of  difficulty  by  a  maid  who  was  en 
tirely  unused  to  its  manipulation  ;  the  glasses  were 
filled  when,  to  her  husband's  amazement,  Mrs.  Hutton 
arose  and  said  : 

1  '  I  want  you  all  to  drink  with  me  to  Laurence  on  his 
birthday." 

Laurence,  entirely  overcome,  for  he  had  forgotten 
that  it  was  his  birthday,  happened  to  glance  at  Tadema 
and  Mrs.  Tadema,  when  he  saw  the  looks  of  over 
whelming  astonishment  which  they  cast  toward  each 
other.  Before  he  had  time  to  rise  and  express  his 
feeble  thanks  and  appreciation  of  the  toast,  Mr.  Tadema 
got  up  and  in  a  few  well-chosen  words  replied.  It  so 
happened  that  his  name  was  Laurence  and  that  it  was 
his  own  birthday;  and,  curiously  enough,  that  of  his 
eldest  daughter,  who  had  been  born  also  on  the  8th  of 
August,  and  had  been  named  L,aurence  Tadema,  Jr., 


332  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

on  that  account.  Tadema  confessed  afterwards  that 
he  had  read  Daisy  Miller  and  fancied  that  here  in 
this  little  provincial  Knglish  town  was  a  real  Daisy 
Miller,  drinking  to  him  whom  she  had  never  met  be 
fore,  drinking  his  health  on  his  birthday,  and  calling 
him  familiarly  and  lovingly  by  his  first  name. 

My  own  acquaintance  with  Tadema  began  in  an 
equally  curious  way.  James  R.  Osgood,  who  always 
expressed  himself  by  a  dinner  or  a  luncheon,  having 
discovered  incidentally  that  William  Dean  Howells  and 
George  H.  Boughton  had  never  met,  invited  them  with 
a  few  friends  of  his  and  theirs  to  dine  at  the  Arts  Club 
in  London.  In  the  middle  of  the  symposium  it  was 
discovered  that  Tadema  and  Whistler  were  sitting  to 
gether  at  an  adjoining  table.  I  alone  of  Mr.  Osgood' s 
party  was  unknown  to  Tadema.  He  came  forward, 
leaned  over  the  back  of  my  chair — why  my  chair  I 
never  knew, — planted  his  chin  on  the  top  of  the  little 
bald  spot  on  my  head,  and  addressed  the  assembled 
coterie  for  some  fifteen  minutes,  the  vibration  of  every 
word  he  uttered  moving  through  my  entire  frame ; 
Whistler  with  his  one  eye-glass  taking  it  all  in  and 
very  much  amused.  At  the  conclusion  of  Mr.  Tadema' s 
oration,  eloquent  and  amusing,  he  went  back  to  his 
own  seat  at  his  own  table  and  I  inquired  of  my  host : 

"  Who  is  this  British  Sarony  who  has  been  taking 
these  liberties  with  the  top  of  my  head  ? ' ' 

"  Why,  that 's  Tadema;  don't  you  know  Tadema?  " 

Qf  course  I  knew  Tadema  the  artist,  but  Tadema  the 


at  tbe  ftabemaa  333 

man  I  never  before  had  met  so  emphatically  in  the 
flesh,  and  Bough  ton  said  : 

"  Come  over  here,  Tad,  and  let  me  introduce  you  to 
I^aurence  Hutton — one  of  our  kindred  kind." 

And  Tad  replied: 

"  I  knew  he  was  one  of  our  kind  or  I  would  n't  have 
talked  into  him  as  I  did.  You  can  never  fool  me  about 
one  of  the  boys." 

We  were  fortunate  enough  to  be  in  London  supping 
with  the  Gosses,  on  the  occasion  of  Alma  Tadema's 
first  housewarming  in  the  building  in  London  which 
has  since  become  so  famous.  Mrs.  Hutton  and  I,  in 
the  natural  course  of  events,  drifted  apart ;  she  talking 
to  those  of  her  friends  whom  she  knew,  and  I  looking 
for  old  friends  and  acquaintances.  Stepping  up  to  Miss 
Tadema,  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  house,  and  looking 
about  me  at  the  vast  array  of  celebrities  there  gathered, 
I  said: 

1  *  Now  tell  me  who  some  of  these  people  are.  I  know 
that  they  are  all  somebodies,  and  I  recognise  a  great 
many  faces,  familiar  either  from  my  personal  associa 
tion  with  them  or  from  the  photographs  I  have  seen  in 
the  literary  or  artistic  journals  or  in  shop  windows. 
Whistler  I  know,  of  course,  and  Sir  Frederick  Leighton, 
and  Charles  Dickens  (the  younger),  and  Joseph  Hatton, 
Miss  Genevieve  Ward,  and  Dobson,  and  Lang ;  but 
there  is  one  man  talking  to  your  father  now  whose  face 
I  know  perfectly  well,  but  whom  I  cannot  place." 

Whereupon  an  extremely  pretty  young  woman,  to 


334  {Talks  in  a  library 

whom  I  had  not  been  introduced,  sought  to  enlighten 
me  by  saying: 

"  Why,  that  's  my  father."     And  I  replied  : 

* '  Now,  Mademoiselle,  you  have  added  very  much  to 
my  curiosity,  because  I  've  been  trying  to  place  you" 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Hutton,"  she  said,  "  you  have  seen  me  in 
Punch.  I  'm  Miss  du  Maurier.  And  if  you  don't 
know  Papa,  who  has  just  been  made  a  Kinsman  and 
is  more  proud  of  the  fact  than  of  his  membership  in  the 
Royal  Academy,  let  me  tell  him  who  you  are. ' ' 

And  that  was  the  beginning  of  my  very  pleasant  but 
short  acquaintance  with  George  du  Maurier.  The 
pleasant  sentiment  of  fraternity  existing  among  all  the 
members  of  that  unique  little  association,  The  Kinsmen, 
gave  us  a  feeling  of  belonging  to  each  other  which  our 
personal  knowledge  of  each  other  would  hardly  have 
warranted.  We  dined  together  in  London  at  one  or 
two  of  the  Kinsmen  festivals,  and  we  met  in  other 
places  in  a  "  how-de-do  "  passing  way.  And  that  was 
all.  I  am  sure  he  was  a  good  fellow.  But  he  had  no 
opportunity  to  make  any  positive  impression  upon  me 
in  a  purely  personal  way.  Two  of  his  letters  inserted 
into  my  bound  copies  of  Peter  Ibbetson  and  Trilby  I 
prize  very  highly.  In  the  first  he  says  : 

"  I  am  delighted  that  you  should  like  the  opening  of 
P.  I.  I  took  much  pains  with  it  as  it  is  in  contrast  with 
the  sordid  English  life  that  is  to  follow.  Then  he  will 
get  back  to  France  again,  and  the  old  life,  but  in  a  new 
and  unsuspected  way. 


Croustades  cle  Foie  Gras  i-  la  Banquicre. 


.\ik-rons  dc  Poulardes  a 


i  rouses  d'Ecosso  rianque 
de  Vignes. 


Asperges  en 
sauce  Mousse 


AN  AUTOGRAPHED  KINSMEN  MENU 


©riginals  of  bu  flfcaurier    335 


'  *  Barring  that  I  have  beautified  the  principal  people 
and  elongated  them  by  a  foot  or  so,  the  first  part  is 
almost  autobiographical,  and  the  old  Major,  whose  real 
name  was  du  Quesne,  is  a  portrait."  (This  is  dated 
June  2,  1891.) 

On  the  1  8th  of  January,  1893,  ^e  wrote: 

"  I  am  delighted  that  you  like  the  beginning  of 
Trilby.  It  makes  me  hope  that  you  will  like  it  all 
through  as  it  was  all  written  of  a  piece  with  a  galloping 
pen  after  having  carefully  made  it  all  out  in  my  head. 

*  '  Taffy  is  made  out  of  two  or  three  people.  Van 
Trump  is  only  there  for  the  strength.  *  L,ittle  Billee  ' 
is  what  I  imagine  Fred  Walker  might  have  been  in 
similar  circumstances,  and  the  villain  is  founded  on  a 
certain  L,ouis  Brassin  whom  I  knew  in  Antwerp  and 
Dusseldorf,  a  great  pianist  but  monstrously  increased 
and  bedeviled.  I  am  glad  you  like  the  girl.  The 
drawings  cost  me  much  pains  and  I  have  n't  finished 
them  yet,  —  one  hundred  and  twenty  in  all." 

A  propos  of  these  letters,  there  appeared  in  The 
Critic,  in  1893,  tne  following  paragraph  : 

"  Mr.  Laurence  Hutton  had  a  shock  not  long  ago. 
Among  his  many  literary  treasures  is  a  copy  of  Peter 
Ibbetson  in  which  is  bound  an  autograph  letter  from  du 
Maurier,  telling  who  the  different  characters  in  the 
story  are,  or  rather  from  whom  they  were  drawn. 
Mr.  Hutton  wanted  to  flaunt  this  interesting  volume 
before  the  eyes  of  a  friend,  and  went  to  the  shelf  to  get 
it,  when  lo!  it  had  disappeared.  High  and  low  he 


336  Eaihs  in  a  library 

searched,  but  could  not  find  it.  Weeks  passed  by,  and 
he  had  given  it  up  for  lost.  The  subject  came  up  in 
the  presence  of  a  visitor.  '  I  know  where  the  book 
is,'  she  said,  and  straightway  walked  to  the  book 
shelf  marked  *  Fiction '  and  took  it  out.  The  trouble 
is  that  Mr.  Hutton  classifies  his  books,  and  the  du 
Maurier  should  have  been  on  the  shelf  with  '  Pre 
sentation  Copies,'  instead  of  which  it  got  among  the 
fiction.  Believing  that  his  system  is  infallible,  Mr. 
Hutton  had  not  thought  of  looking  for  the  book  there, 
though  he  looked  everywhere  else.  The  moral  of  this 
is  that  when  one  loses  a  book,  he  must  look  for  it  in 
the  likely  as  well  as  the  unlikely  places,  if  he  would 
find  it." 

Since  then  the  Hutton  library  has  little  printed  in 
scriptions  on  every  group  of  volumes,  "  Please  do  not 
return  the  books  to  the  shelves."  Any  one  knows 
how  to  take  a  book  out,  but  no  one  but  the  owner 
knows  just  where  to  put  the  book  back. 

I  wanted  to  possess  a  copy  of  the  Trilby  that  first  ap 
peared  in  Harper 's  Monthly.  The  issue  for  March 
contained  a  take-off  on  Whistler  and  was  immediately 
suppressed,  although  the  numbers  already  issued  be 
fore  the  complaints  from  Whistler  came  to  hand 
could  not  be  recalled,  I  said  to  one  in  authority  at 
Harper's: 

"  I  want  a  copy  of  that  issue." 

"  You  can't  have  it,  it  has  been  suppressed." 

"But  I  '11  buy  it." 


H  flDeans  of  possession        337 

"We  can't  sell  even  one  more;  but  —  damn  you  — 
you  know  where  they  are!  " 

I  did,  and  the  result  of  my  knowledge  is  the  cutting 
that  is  pasted  in  the  back  of  my  copy  of  Trilby. 

Another  case  of  possession  that  was  very  similar  was 
when  I  once  wanted  an  original  drawing  from  the 
Century  people,  and  could  not  prevail  upon  them  to 
either  give  or  sell  me  a  copy.  But  a  day  or  two  follow 
ing  I  received  the  picture  with  a  courteous  note  ex 
plaining  that  the  Century  Company  would  be  very  glad 
indeed  if  I  would  accept  the  drawing  as  a  loan  for  a 
period  of  one  hundred  years. 

And  yet  again,  a  third  time,  has  this  experience  of 
possession  befallen  me. 

I  once  wanted  very  badly  to  bring  out  to  the  Golf 
Club  in  Princeton  the  Rules  and  Regulations  of  the 
Club  of  St.  Andrews,  printed  in  due  form,  and  upon 
which  all  the  rules  of  golf,  from  the  beginning  of  golf, 
are  based.  I  found  a  copy  of  the  Rules  one  day  in  a 
little  book-shop  of  the  town  of  St.  Andrews  in  Scotland. 
Expressing  my  desire  to  purchase  it,  the  owner  said: 

( *  You  know  they  are  not  here  for  me  to  sell  or  to 
give  away;  but  I  am  going  into  the  other  room  for  a 
minute  and  I  see  no  reason  why  you  should  n't  take 
them!" 

The  Trilby  bit  was  cut  from  page  142  in  the  volume 
as  it  was  published  by  the  Harpers  in  1894,  an(^  is  as 
follows : 

"  Then  there  was  JoeSibley,  the  idle  apprentice,  the 


338  tTalhe  in  a  Xibrar\> 

king  of  Bohemia;  le  roi  des  truands,  to  whom  every 
thing  was  forgiven,  as  to  Francois  Villon,  &  cause  de 
ses  gentillesses. 

"Always  in  debt  like  Svengali,  vain,  witty,  and  a 
most  exquisite  and  original  artist;  and  also  eccentric  in 
his  attire  (though  clean),  so  that  people  would  stare  at 
him  as  he  walked  along  —  which  he  adored!  But  (un 
like  Svengali)  he  was  genial,  caressing,  sympathetic, 
charming,  the  most  irresistible  friend  in  the  world  as 
long  as  his  friendship  lasted — but  that  was  not  forever! 

;<  The  moment  his  friendship  left  off,  his  enmity  be 
gan  at  once.  Sometimes  this  enmity  would  take  the 
simple  and  straightforward  form  of  trying  to  punch  his 
ex-friend's  head;  and  when  the  ex-friend  was  too  big, 
he  would  get  some  new  friend  to  help  him.  And  much 
bad  blood  would  be  caused  in  this  way  —  though  very 
little  was  spilt.  And  all  this  bad  blood  was  not  made 
better  by  the  funny  things  he  went  on  saying  through 
life  about  the  unlucky  one  who  had  managed  to  offend 
him  —  things  that  stuck  forever!  His  bark  was  worse 
than  his  bite — he  was  better  with  his  tongue  than  with 
his  fists — a  dangerous  joker  !  But  when  he  met  an 
other  joker  face  to  face,  even  an  inferior  joker — with  a 
rougher  wit,  a  coarser  thrust,  a  louder  laugh,  a  tougher 
hide — he  would  just  collapse,  like  a  pricked  bladder! 

"  He  is  now  perched  on  such  a  topping  pinnacle  (of 
fame  and  notoriety  combined)  that  people  can  stare  at 
him  from  two  hemispheres  at  once;  and  so  famous  as  a 
wit  that  when  he  jokes  (and  he  is  always  joking)  peo- 


/f%. 


£  '    / 

X     S 


Pottash  tortueux 

Filet  d'esprit  au  vin  blanc 
Blanc  bete  au  Diablo 

Pain  doux  aux  petit s  poids 
Fjjef  cllateau  O'Brien  au  bord  de  1  uise 
Av( 

Chores  a  la  moelle  ''"  (' ''-   ^   C 

xT^i         Uric  afVaire  bien  froitle       y- 


uine  de  moineau  ^^*' 


Laurence  Hutton. 


AN   AUTOGRAPHED    KINSMEN    MENU 


Ipen  portrait  339 


pie  laugh  first,  and  then  ask  what  it  was  he  was  joking 
about.  And  you  can  even  make  your  own  mild  funni- 
ments  raise  a  roar  by  merely  prefacing  them,  '  as  Joe 
Sibley  once  said.'  The  present  scribe  has  often  done 
so.  And  if  by  any  chance  you  should  one  day,  by  a 
happy  fluke,  hit  upon  a  really  good  thing  of  your  own 
—  good  enough  to  be  quoted  —  be  sure  it  will  come  back  to 
you  after  many  days  prefaced,  '  as  Joe  Sibley  once  said.'  " 

And  a  little  farther  on  some  more  cutting  was  done 
with  the  result  that  the  following  was  eliminated: 

"  Joe  Sibley,  equally  enthusiastic,  was  more  faithful. 
He  was  a  monotheist,  and  had  but  one  god,  and  was 
less  tiresome  in  the  expression  of  his  worship.  He  is 
so  still,  —  and  his  god  is  still  the  same,  —  no  stodgy  old 
master,  this  divinity,  but  a  modern  of  the  moderns! 
For  forty  years  the  cosmopolite  Joe  has  been  singing 
his  one  god's  praise  in  every  tongue  he  knows  and  in 
every  country  —  and  also  his  contempt  for  all  rivals  to 
this  godhead  —  whether  quite  sincerely  or  not,  who  can 
say?  Men's  motives  are  so  mixed!  But  so  eloquently, 
so  wittily,  so  prettily,  that  he  almost  persuades  you  to 
be  a  fellow  worshipper.  Almost,  only  !  —  for  if  he  did 
quite,  you  (being  a  capitalist)  would  buy  nothing  but 
'  Sibleys'  (which  you  don't).  For  Sibley  was  the  god 
of  Joe's  worship,  and  none  other  !  and  he  would  hear 
of  no  other  genius  in  the  world  ! 

'  '  L,et  us  hope  that  he  sometimes  laughed  at  himself 
in  his  sleeve  —  or  winked  at  himself  in  his  looking-glass, 
with  his  tongue  in  his  cheek! 


340  Salfcs  in  a  llibrarp 

' '  And  here,  lest  there  should  be  any  doubt  as  to  his 
identity,  let  me  add  that  although  quite  young  he  had 
beautiful  white  hair  like  an  Albino's,  as  soft  and  bright 
as  floss  silk  —  and  also  that  he  was  tall  and  slim  and 
graceful;  and,  like  most  of  the  other  personages  con 
nected  with  this  light  story,  very  nice  to  look  at,  with 
pretty  manners  (and  unimpeachable  moral  tone). 

' '  Joe  Sibley  did  not  think  much  of  Lorrimer  in  those 
days,  nor  L,orrimer  of  him,  for  all  they  were  such  good 
friends.  And  neither  of  them  thought  much  of  L,ittle 
Billee,  whose  pinnacle  (of  pure  unadulterated  fame)  is 
now  the  highest  of  all  —  the  highest  probably  that  can 
be  for  a  mere  painter  of  pictures  !  " 

The  Harpers  sent  to  Whistler  the  following  apology : 

"  Pursuant  to  an  arrangement  made  with  Mr.  J.  Mc- 
Neill  Whistler  by  our  London  agents,  Messrs.  Osgood, 
Mcllvaine,  &  Co.,  the  publishers  of  the  English  edition 
of  Harper's  Magazine,  the  following  letter  is  published: 

"  August  31,  1894. 
"DEAR  SIR: 

"  Our  attention  has  been  called  to  the  attack  made 
upon  you  by  Mr.  du  Maurier  in  the  novel  Trilby, 
which  appeared  in  our  Magazine.  If  we  had  had  any 
knowledge  of  personal  reference  to  yourself  being  in 
tended,  we  should  not  have  permitted  the  publication 
of  such  passages  as  could  be  offensive  to  you.  As  it 
is,  we  have  freely  made  such  reparation  as  is  in  our 
power.  We  both  agree  to  stop  the  future  sales  of  the 
March  number  of  Harped s  Magazine,  and  we  .under- 


flntereating  letters       341 


take  that,  when  the  story  appears  in  the  form  of  a 
book,  the  March  number  shall  be  rewritten  so  as  to 
omit  every  mention  of  the  offensive  character,  and  that 
the  illustration  which  represents  the  Idle  Apprentices 
shall  be  excised,  and  that  the  portraits  of  Joe  Sibley 
in  the  general  sense  shall  be  altered  so  as  to  give  no 
clue  to  your  identity.  Moreover,  we  engage  to  print 
and  insert  in  our  Magazine  for  the  month  of  October 
this  letter  of  apology  addressed  to  you.' 

'  '  Assuring  you  again  of  our  sincere  regret  that  you 
should  have  sustained  the  least  annoyance  in  any  pub 
lication  of  ours,  we  are, 

"  Yours  respectfully, 

"  HARPER  &  BROTHERS."  * 

Another  interesting  episode  of  letter-writing,  which 
it  can  now  do  no  harm  to  make  public,  fell  under  my 
notice  during  my  connection  with  Harper*  s.  In  a  long 
letter,  dated  "  Dec.  i8th"  merely  (without  the  year), 
that  is  now  in  my  possession,  Charles  Reade  speaks 
freely  of  the  books  of  a  contemporary  writer,  in  which 
he  compares  her  work  with  his  own.  He  says  : 

'  '  In  Daniel  Deronda  everything  is  sacrificed  to  bulk  . 
It  is  parvum  in  multo  ;  but  my  stories  are  multum  in 
parvo.  You  might  as  well  estimate  the  precious  metals 
by  superficial  area  and  pay  what  you  pay  for  a  bag  of 

1  The  note  of  apology  appeared  in  the  English  edition  of  the 
Monthly  ',  according  to  the  expressed  wish  of  Mr.  Whistler. 

2  And  on  the  same  back  cover  of  Trilby  with  these  two  clip 
pings  Mr.  Hutton  has  pasted  the  suppressed  print  of  the  Idle 
Apprentices  that  appeared  in  the  fatal  March,  1894,  issue. 


342  £alfes  in  a  Xibrar? 

feathers.  Even  in  the  case  of  The  Woman  Hater  this 
applies.  The  bulk  of  Daniel  Deronda  entails  on  the 
publisher  a  greater  expense  of  paper,  that  is  all.  The 
book  will  not  sell  any  the  more  for  all  that  verbosity. 
Consider  what  follows  : 

"  i.  George  Eliot  has  a  fine  mind,  but  is  a  novice  in 
fiction  and  cannot  tell  a  story  well.  /  can,  thanks  to 
so  profound  a  study  of  the  art. 

"  2.  She  lives  with  an  anonymous  writer,  and  they 
have  bought  the  English  press  and  humbugged  the 
English  public.  But  they  cannot  humbug  the  Ameri 
can  public.  She  is  not  so  popular  in  the  United  States 
as  I  am,  and  never  will  be. 

"  3.  If  by  any  cabal  she  can  attain  higher  prices  in 
England  than  I  can,  it  is  no  reason  why  injustice 
should  cross  the  water.  The  American  public  prefer 
me ;  and  I  ought  to  profit  by  the  preference. 

' '  4.  Daniel  Deronda  is  below  her  average  :  it  is  a 
wind-bag.  To  use  the  words  of  Milton,  it  is  *  Bulk 
without  spirit  vast.'  It  is  a  bungling,  ill-constructed 
story  with  an  ignoble  heroine  and  an  unmanly  hero, 
and  a  lot  of  romantic,  greasy  Jews  that  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  despises,  varnish  them  how  you  will.  That 
dreary  waste  of  words  leaves  on  the  mind  not  one  really 
powerful  situation,  not  one  new  and  salient  idea,  not 
one  great  lesson  of  virtue,  wisdom,  justice,  or  public 
policy.  It  is  given  a  lining  of  a  pretentious  kind,  and 
its  verbosity  will  land  it  in  the  trunk-maker's  shop  in 
two  3'ears  at  farthest. ' ' 


IDamn  Hutoerapbs  343 


When  I  had  an  opportunity  and  a  good  one,  I  did 
not  meet  George  Eliot,—  a  fact  that  I  have  always  re 
gretted.  During  his  first  visit  to  London,  John  Fiske 
was  asked  to  take  a  cup  of  tea  at  the  Leweses'  and  sug 
gested  my  going  with  him,  but  as  I  was  absolutely  un 
known  to  these  people  —  much  as  I  wanted  to  know 
them  —  and  as  I  had  n't  been  invited,  I  did  not  do  so. 

Charles  Reade  I  knew  only  by  sight  and  by  some 
very  slight  correspondence.  He  objected  strongly  to 
having  his  portrait  painted,  and  he  is  said  never  to 
have  sat  for  a  photograph.  I  have  a  lithograph  of  a 
pencil  drawing  of  Reade,  and  an  original  coloured  cari 
cature  by  Sent,  whereon  Charles  Reade  wrote  in  1877 
that  he  was  "  glad  there  is  no  photo  of  me,  for  it  would 
be  enough  sight  worse."  And  I  have,  also,  a  scrap  of 
paper  upon  which  he  had  written  for  Miss  Kate  Field, 
in  response  to  a  request  for  his  signature  : 

"Damn  Autographs, 

"CHARLES  READE." 

I  saw  a  good  deal  of  John  Fiske  the  first  time  he  was 
in  Burope.  I  met  him  by  appointment  on  his  arrival 
in  Liverpool,  and  the  next  morning  we  went  to  Ches 
ter,  the  traditional  thing  for  all  strangers  in  England 
to  do.  We  were  to  spend  some  days  in  that  part  of 
the  world;  but  John  felt  that  he  could  not  wait,  so  I 
telegraphed  to  my  landlady  in  Craven  Street,  London, 
that  I  would  be  there  late  that  night  with  a  friend. 
After  long  delays  —  the  day  being  Sunday  —  we  reached 


344  Galfcs  in  a  library 

Craven  Street  about  midnight.  The  whole  thing  was 
new  to  Fiske,  and  immensely  interesting  ;  the  porters, 
the  cabs,  the  dingy,  dirty,  silent  streets, —  all  appealed 
to  him.  At  the  door  we  were  met  by  the  whole  force 
of  the  establishment :  the  typical  London  landlady 
made  familiar  by  Dickens,  the  boy  in  buttons,  the 
slavey  —  begrimed  as  she  always  is  —  who  carried  our 
portmanteaus  to  their  proper  places.  Then,  to  his  de 
light  and  to  my  satisfaction,  we  found  on  the  table  in 
the  sitting-room  cold  beef,  crisp  salad,  chunks  of  old 
Cheshire  cheese,  knobs  of  bread,  and  pints  of  stout. 
John  felt  that  it  was  the  realisation  of  the  dream  of  his 
life.  He  was  at  last  in  London,  which  meant  so  much 
to  him  and  to  all  those  who  are  familiar  with  the  liter 
ary  men  among  whom  he  had  lived  all  his  life.  He 
could  not  go  to  bed;  he  was  too  excited  for  that;  and 
as  the  night  was  clear,  I  suggested  a  walk.  It  was 
about  two  o'clock  in  the  autumn  morning  when  we 
sallied  forth. 

Going  to  the  bottom  of  Craven  Street,  then  nearly 
cut  through  to  the  Embankment, — John  silent  and  ab 
sorbed, —  I  told  him  nothing.  I  simply  answered  his 
questions.  He  asked : 

"  What  's  that  stream,  Laurence?" 

"  That 's  the  Thames,  old  man,"  and  we  stood  look 
ing  at  it  in  absolute  silence.  Then  we  walked  west 
ward  a  bit. 

' '  And  what  are  those  buildings  across  the  river, 
over  there  ?  '  * 


Cbarm  of  ILcmfcon         345 


"  The  L,ambeth  pottery  works;  and  beyond,  L,ambeth 
Palace." 

And  again  we  stood  perfectly  silent,  and  gazed. 
Making  a  little  detour,  I  then  showed  him  the  window 
in  Whitehall  Palace  out  of  which  Charles  stepped  to 
his  execution;  the  statue  of  his  son,  then  pointing  to 
the  spot  where  the  scaffold  stood,  but  since  removed; 
and  a  little  farther  along  I  showed  him  the  Church  of 
St.  Margaret,  in  which  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  is  buried. 

"  And  beyond?  "  he  asked,  "  the  big  building?  " 

"John,"  I  said,  "that  is  the  Poets'  Corner  end  of 
Westminster  Abbey." 

He  clutched  me  by  the  arm,  and  literally  ran  towards 
the  spot  as  if  afraid  that  the  thing  which  had  been 
there  so  many  years  would  not  wait  until  he  reached  it. 
After  a  long  reverent  pause,  he  said: 

"  I  want  to  go  home  now." 

And  neither  of  us  spoke  again  until  the  next  morn 
ing  at  breakfast. 

The  month  which  followed  was  one  of  great  delight 
to  me,  simply  in  watching  his  own  delight  and  appre 
ciation  and  thorough  understanding  of  all  he  saw  in 
and  out  of  London.  After  a  few  days  he  knew  the 
streets  of  the  town  even  better  than  I  did,  —  I,  who  had 
been  making  a  study  of  them  for  a  quarter  of  a  century. 

Our  visit  to  Stratford  was  in  that  year  or  a  later  one, 
I  cannot  remember  which.  It  gave  great  pleasure  to 
us  both.  There  he  saw  his  first  smock-frock,  and 
tasted  his  first  home-brewed  ale.  His  great  pleasure 


346  Galfcs  in  a  OLibrarp 

was  in  his  talks  with  the  Warwickshire  old  men  and 
old  women,  whose  curious  dialect  became  at  once  fa 
miliar  to  him.  And  he  was  particularly  impressed  with 
many  of  the  quaint  sayings  and  phrases  which  seem  to 
show  the  survival — if  not  of  the  fittest — of  something 
he  thought  well  worth  surviving.  And  never  did  he 
question  the  fact  that  Shakespeare  wrote  Shakespeare's 
plays. 

Paris  did  not  appeal  to  Fiske  so  much  as  did  Lon 
don;  but  in  a  way  it  exhibited  to  me  very  strongly  his 
extraordinary  possession  of  what  is  called  the  gift  of 
location.  We  arrived  in  Paris  late  one  evening,  long 
after  dark.  The  rain  was  falling  in  torrents,  and  the 
streets  were  deserted  as  we  drove  to  our  little  hotel  in 
the  Rue  de  Rivoli.  When  we  had  climbed  to  the  top 
of  the  house,  it  was  discovered  that  John  had  left  his 
umbrella  in  the  train.  Such  things  were  never  lost  in 
France,  he  was  told,  and  he  would  find  it  safely  enough 
when  he  went  for  it.  We  two  had  adjoining  bedrooms, 
and  when  I  awoke  the  next  morning — the  sun  shining 
brightly — there  was  no  Fiske.  By  the  time  coffee  was 
ready,  he  marched  in  with  his  umbrella  in  his  hand. 
He  had  walked  directly  to  the  station,  through  streets 
with  which  he  was  absolutely  unfamiliar  and  had  never 
seen  except  through  the  dripping  panes  of  a  cab  win 
dow.  How  he  went  and  came  without  asking  a  single 
question,  he  never  could  explain.  To  him  it  was  a 
matter  of  course;  to  me  it  was  a  most  remarkable 
performance. 


Cocfmep  Goucb  347 


A  curious  incident  which  pleased  Fiske  very  much 
related  to  the  spelling  of  my  surname.  We  had  gone 
together  one  morning,  in  L,ondon,  to  get  our  letters, 
and  for  me  there  was  none.  I  gave  my  name  care 
fully,  but  there  was  nothing.  I  felt  sure  that  there 
must  be  some  correspondence  for  me,  and  was  inspired 
to  ask  the  cockney  clerk  if  he  were  looking  under  H. 
Immediately,  a  great  mass  of  mail  matter  was  produced. 
It  seems  he  had  been  searching  in  vain  for  Hutton  in 
the  box  of  U. 

For  years  after  that  John  Fiske  in  writing  to  me  al 
ways  dropped  the  initial  H  ;  and  I  heard  him  one  night 
in  a  public  lecture  in  Baltimore  speak  of  the  occurrence 
a  propos  of  some  eccentric  linguistic  matter  which  he 
wanted  to  illustrate.  After  I  had  returned  to  America 
that  year,  he  wrote: 

"  ii  CRAVEN  STREET,  STRAND, 
"October  8th,  1873. 

"  DEAR  UTTON: 

".  .  .  After  leaving  you  I  proceeded  to  Winder- 
mere  and  stopped  at  Cloudsdale,  Crown  Hotel,  Bon- 
ness,  during  three  days,  making  excursions  to  Coniston, 
Furness  Abbey,  Patterdale,  etc.  Then  I  proceeded  to 
Ambleside,  Grasmere,  and  Keswick,  thence  to  Car 
lisle,  and  thence  to  Edinburgh,  where  I  spent  several 
days.  The  weather  was  superb,  and  I  never  enjoyed 
myself  so  much  anywhere  else  in  my  life,  I  think.  I 
believe  I  must  have  explored  nearly  every  corner  of 
the  town,  besides  climbing  all  the  high  places  to  get  a 


348  Galfcs  in  a  Xibran? 

comprehensive  view  of  it.  I  was  positively  enchanted 
with  the  town.  From  Edinburgh  I  went  to  Stirling 
and  had  a  gorgeous  day,  with  a  cloudless  American 
sky,  for  the  grand  view  from  the  ramparts  of  the  Castle. 
I  saw  the  Trossachs,  Loch  Katrine,  and  Loch  Lomond 
under  a  brilliant  sun.  But  at  Glasgow  there  arose  a 
fiendish  yellow  mist,  and  there  descended  rain  and  sleet 
and  devilish  little  did  I  see  of  the  Clyde.  As  we  en 
tered  the  Isles  of  Bute  it  cleared  up,  and  the  sail 
through  the  Crinan  Canal  was  jolly.  But  from  Crinan 
to  Oban  we  had  three  hours  of  a  heavy  gale  with  fear 
fully  rough  sea.  The  waves  broke  several  feet  above 
the  tops  of  the  paddle-boxes,  and  twice  the  floor  of  the 
saloon  rose  up  and  hit  me  on  the  head.  We  had  at 
least  one  hundred  passengers  and  they  were  mostly  sea 
sick  within  fifteen  minutes,  but  I  escaped  without  any 
nausea.  It  was  so  rough  that  I  doubted  if  the  steamer 
would  start  for  Staffa  next  day,  and  so  kept  on  to 
Ballachulish.  Tried  Glencoe  next  day  in  the  most 
horrible  rain  I  ever  saw,  went  back  to  Oban,  and  took 
coach  through  the  Pass  of  Brander,  and  by  Loch  Awe 
and  Glenarchy  to  Tyndrum,  and  thence  through  In- 
verary  and  Glencoe  back  to  Ballachulish,  and  thence 
to  Fort  William.  This  took  me  through  some  of  the 
grandest  moorland  in  Scotland,  and  I  enjoyed  it  hugely. 
Weather  sunny,  with  showers.  Then  on  a  superb  day 
I  went  by  the  Caledonian  Canal  to  Inverness,  seeing  the 
Fall  of  Foyers  en  route ;  and  this  day  I  enjoyed  most  of 
all  It  remains  in  my  mind  as  the  climax  of  the  whole 


3obn  jfisfce  in  EnglanJ)        349 

journey,  which  altogether  was  the  grandest  journey  I 
ever  made." 

In  the  same  letter  Fiske  speaks  of  stopping  in  Ips 
wich  at  the  Great  White  Horse,  "  where  Mr.  Pickwick 
had  the  romantic  adventure  with  the  middle-aged  lady 
in  yellow  curl-papers,  and  it  's  a  jolly  old  place." 

"LONDON,  Decembers,  1873. 
11  MY  DEAR  UTTON  : 

"  I  am  a  great  fellow  to  answer  letters,  you  will  say. 
Here  it  is  December  8th,  and  yours  of  November  2d, 
still  unanswered.  This  morning  I  made  up  my  mind 
to  make  a  clean  sweep,  and  so  I  have  been  at  it  all  day. 
I  will  try  to  plunge  at  once  in  medias  res,  and  give  you 
a  general  notion  of  things. 

"Imprimis,  I  left  Craven  Street  October  nth,  and 
moved  to  67  Great  Russell  Street  (opposite  British 
Museum)  where  I  still  hang  out.  The  heft  of  the  time 
since  then  has  been  employed  at  hard  work  on  my 
book.  That  is,  I  get  up  at  10  A.M.  (say)  and  work  till 
5  or  6  P.M.,  and  then  dine  out  on  invitation,  or  dine 
alone  at  Kittner's  or  some  shilling  roast-beef  place.  I 
have  found  a  great  deal  of  work  still  left  in  my  book, 
and  if  I  get  through  with  it  in  four  weeks  more  I  shall 
be  lucky.  Half  of  Vol.  I.  went  to  the  printer  ten  days 
ago,  but  no  proofs  have  come  in  yet.  Macmillan  is 
going  to  publish  it  {Outlines  of  Cosmic  Philosophy)  in 
connection  with  J.  R.  Osgood  &  Co.,  but  we  don't  ex 
pect  to  get  it  out  before  next  September.  Proofs  will 


350  ftalfea  in  a  Xibrarp 

have  to  chase  me  by  mail  all  over  the  Continent,  so  that 
the  printing  will  be  slow.  I  have  become  quite  friendly 
with  old  Macmillan,and  have  had  several  very  gay  times 
at  his  house.  I  have  seen  Spencer  so  many  times  that  I 
can't  count  'em  all;  have  lunched  and  dined  with  him 
five  or  six  times,  and  met  him  elsewhere,  and  had  him 
drop  in  here  several  times.  I  have  dined  twice  with 
'Uxley, —  once  at  Spencer's,  once  at  the  X  Club,  and 
shall  again  dine  with  him  twice  this  week, — at  his  own 
house,  and  at  the  Royal  Society  Club.  Have  also 
lunched  or  dined,  or  both,  with  Tyndall,  L,ewes,  Frank- 
land,  Hooker,  Darwin,  Froude,  W.  K.  Clifford,  and 
M.  D.  Conway.  .  .  .  And  have  seen  George  Eliot 
and  had  a  long  talk  with  her,  and  see  no  reason  in  the 
world  why  she  should  n't  have  her  photograph  circu 
lated  about.  She  is  n't  a  blooming  beauty,  but  she  is 
not  particularly  homely,  and  is  certainly  a  most  re 
markable  and  attractive  woman  in  conversation.  I 
enjoyed  the  afternoon  with  the  L,eweses  very  much, 
and  shall  go  there  again.1  Of  all  the  men  I  have  seen 
I  like  Darwin  the  best.  He  is  a  dear,  good,  gentle, 
modest,  charming  old  grandpa.  I  never  saw  such  a 
delightful  man  in  all  my  life.  Next  to  him  I  think  I 
like  Huxley;  he  is  such  a  keen,  clear-thinking  fellow 
that  it  is  a  rich  treat  to  talk  with  him;  and  he  is  a 
thoroughly  white-souled  and  genial  man  too.  Have 

1  Black  wood,  the  publisher,  in  George  Street,  Edinburgh,  has 
the  only  portrait  of  Mrs.  Lewes  (George  Eliot)  in  existence, 
done  for  Blackwood  in  crayon  by  Lawrence,  an  American. 


's  Characteristics         351 


also  enjoyed  Spencer  very  much.  I  have  n't  seen 
Stevens  again,  but  have  seen  his  brother  several  times, 
and  dined  with  him  at  some  droll  antiquarian  club,  in 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields.  I  don't  like  Froude.  He  ap 
pears  like  an  insincere  and  treacherous  chap.  I  don't 
think  half  so  well  of  his  history  now  that  I  have  seen 
him.  I  can  well  believe  him  capable  of  suppressing  or 
perverting  facts  to  make  out  a  case.  .  .  .  All  the 
other  coves  mentioned  I  like,  more  especially  Lewes 
and  Tyndall. 

"  I  am  going  to  *  preach  '  to  Conway's  congregation 
these  next  two  Sundays  (December  i4th  and  2ist)  — 
subject  *  Darwinism.'  It  is  thought  there  will  be  a 
good  audience,  and  that  I  shall  get  some  fun  out  of  it. 

'  *  I  believe  this  is  about  all  that  I  have  in  the  way  of 
news  that  can  be  well  detailed  in  a  brief  epistle.  As 
you  may  imagine,  if  I  had  you  over  here,  with  a  pot  of 
beer  between  us,  I  could  tell  you  a  number  of  good 
incidents.  Which  leads  me  to  inquire,  Why  don't  you 
come  back  again  ?  Eh  ?  '  ' 

John  Fiske  never  did  anything  in  moderation.  He 
never  took  a  short  walk  or  drive;  always  a  long  one. 
He  either  smoked  to  excess  or  not  at  all.  He  has  been 
known  to  sleep  from  a  Sunday  to  the  following  Tues 
day  night.  In  eating,  working,  singing,  playing,  in 
everything  he  went  to  excess.  All  one  summer  at 
Petersham  I  remember  he  played  casino,  at  every  avail 
able  hour  and  in  every  possible  place.  He  once  went 
out  by  appointment  to  Jamaica  Plains  to  listen  to  the 


352  tTalfce  in  a 


music  of  a  very  accomplished  pianist.  The  engagement 
had  been  made  for  a  certain  hour  on  a  certain  afternoon. 
Fiske  arrived  on  time,  but,  as  he  entered  the  music 
room,  was  told  that  he  would  have  to  wait  a  few  mo 
ments  for  the  lady  whose  music  he  had  come  to  hear. 
In  her  absence  he  sat  himself  down  to  the  piano  and 
began  to  play  the  music,  which  appealed  to  him,  and 
for  four  hours  he  sat  there  playing  and  utterly  oblivi 
ous  to  the  fact  that  he  had  come  to  listen  and  not  to 
exhibit  himself.  He  went  on  and  on,  and  as  dark 
came,  he  went  away  without  even  offering  his  hostess 
an  opportunity  to  utter  the  sounds  which  had  brought 
him  so  far  away  from  home,  she  apparently  being  as 
well  content  as  he  was. 

Fiske'  s  memory  for  dates,  facts,  and  figures  was  re 
markable;  and  his  exceptional  powers  in  that  line  may 
account,  in  a  great  measure,  for  the  quality  and  the 
quantity  of  his  work.  When  I  visited  him  one  sum 
mer  in  Petersham  to  join  in  a  "grand  loaf"  as  he 
called  it,  I  was  told  that  he  had  nothing  to  do  but  the 
writing  of  one  chapter  in  one  of  his  books.  For  this 
he  had  not  a  note.  It  was  all  in  his  head,  and  the 
transcript  was  to  him  as  nothing  at  all.  The  finished 
manuscript  when  I  saw  it  was  in  a  very  perfect  con 
dition,  with  no  blots  or  erasures,  written  neatly  in  his 
clear,  round  hand,  and  without  pause  or  a  break,  all  at 
one  short  sitting. 

Another  instance  of  his  wonderful  memory  was  ex 
hibited  one  night,  when  I  quoted  from  Our  Mutual 


Barcelona  jEyilea  353 

Friend,  which  I  had  just  been  reading,  the  description 
by  Dickens  of  a  heap  of  nuts  at  a  village  fair  as  being 
"  long  exiled  from  Barcelona,  and  yet  speaking  Eng 
lish  so  indifferently  as  to  call  twelve  of  themselves  a 
pint." 

Fiske  replied,  "  It  was  fourteen  of  themselves." 

"  I  think  it  was  a  dozen,  John,"  said  I,  "  and  I  've 
just  been  reading  it  again." 

"I  never  read  it  but  once,  many  years  ago,  in  the 
Household  Edition  published  by  Hough  ton  about  1866. 
It  was  in  the  last  volume,  on  the  left-hand  page,  about 
a  quarter  of  the  way  from  the  beginning;  and  if  you 
have  that  edition  and  will  look  it  up  you  will  find  that 
they  called  themselves  fourteen." 

And  so  they  did  ! 

One  morning  in  New  York  he  said  suddenly,  a 
propos  of  nothing,  seemingly: 

' '  Do  you  know  what  you  and  I  did  eleven  years  ago 
to-day  at  this  very  hour  ?  ' ' 

Concerning  where  we  were  or  what  happened  to  us 
eleven  years  before  I  had  no  idea. 

Then  he  reminded  me  how  we  had  started  from 
Craven  Street  to  a  restaurant  in  Soho  Square.  How 
our  attention  had  been  attracted  by  an  odour  of  saus 
ages  and  baked  potatoes  in  a  little  shop  in  the  Hay- 
market.  How  we  had  stopped  and  partaken  of  that 
frugal  repast,  which  he  had  pronounced  the  best  he  had 
ever  experienced.  And  then  he  repeated  verbatim  what 
we  had  said  to  the  buxom  cook  and  what  the  buxom 


354  £alfts  in  a  Xibrar? 

cook  had  said  to  us,   as  if  it  were  all  a  matter  of 
yesterday. 

Mrs.  Hutton  said  to  him  one  night  at  our  table  : 
"  What  are  you  talking  about,  you  two?  " 
It  seems  we  were  discussing  old  times,  of  which  he 
was  very  fond,  and  she  asked : 

"  How  far  back  do  your  old  times  go?  How  long 
have  you  known  each  other  ? ' ' 

''  The  first  time  that  I  saw  Laurence  was  on  a  day  in 
one  of  the  sixties,  in  October,  when  Harriet  Brooks 
brought  him  up  to  us  while  we  were  living  in  Oxford 
Street  during  the  first  years  of  our  married  life.  I  re 
member  it  was  the  day  we  bought  the  double  baby- 
carriage  for  Maud  and  Harold,  who  were  so  near  of  an 
age  and  who  looked  so  much  alike  that  by  strangers 
in  the  street  they  were  often  taken  for  twins.  I  re 
member  that  Laurence  had  on  a  green  plaid  silk  necktie 
with  fringe  at  the  ends,  and  that  I  thought  it  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  examples  of  that  sort  of  decoration 
I  had  ever  seen." 

Mrs.  Hutton  when  she  first  knew  John  Fiske,  and 
then  very  slightly,  asked  him  at  dinner  a  question 
about  Pierre  Marquette  in  his  American  History,  to 
which  he  made  absolutely  no  reply,  but  looked  at  her 
in  a  blank,  far-away  manner,  rather  to  her  disgust.  I, 
who  knew  the  man,  knew  what  was  coming.  He  spoke 
but  little  after  that  until  perhaps  an  hour  later,  when, 
standing  and  swaying  back  and  forth  in  front  of  the 
library  fire,  he  broke  out  upon  the  subject  and  deliv- 


JOHN  FISKE  WITH  TWO  OF  HIS  CHILDREN 
(From  a  discolored  photograph) 


Jfiefte  fIDotto  355 


ered  to  us,  alone  as  we  were,  a  lecture  of  many  minutes 
in  length,  in  reply  to  the  question  she  had  put:  most 
entertaining,  most  instructive,  every  word  the  proper 
word,  and  in  the  proper  place,  times  and  localities  ac 
curately  described,  —  and  then  he  sat  down  upon  the 
piano  stool,  playing  Songs  without  Words  for  another 
hour.  Mrs.  Hutton  declared  that  she  did  not  under 
stand  that  peculiar  exhibition  of  genius,  although  she 
was  very  ready  to  confess  that  what  she  had  heard  was 
well  worth  the  waiting  for. 

She  once  met  him  by  chance,  later  in  his  life,  at  the 
door  of  a  certain  public  hall  as  he  was  going  in.  She 
spoke  to  him,  concerning  her  interest  in  his  subject, 
and  he  remarked  seriously,  that  he  hoped  "  the  ladies 
would  enjoy  the  lecture  he  was  going  to  deliver,  be 
cause  it  had  taken  him  seven  years  to  write  it." 

The  I^atin  motto  in  John  Fiske's  library  in  Cam 
bridge  was  Disce  ut  semper  vidurus,  Vive  ut  eras  mori- 
turus,  the  translation  of  which  is,  roughly  :  '  '  Work  as 
if  you  were  to  live  forever;  live  as  if  you  were  to  die  to 
morrow."  These  words  he  wrote  on  the  picture  of 
himself  in  his  workroom,  which  is  now  in  the  collection 
at  Princeton. 

Two  young  Americans  came  to  us  in  I^ondon  once. 
It  was  their  first  trip  abroad.  They  were  interested  in 
everything,  and  because  I  had  studied  and  knew  my 
L,ondon,  they  were  interesting  to  me.  They  wanted  to 
know,  and  they  knew  what  they  wanted  to  know  and 
why  they  wanted  to  know  it;  and  it  gave  me  great 


356  £alfcs  in  a  library 

pleasure  to  take  them  about  and  to  show  thetn  the 
things  that  most  appealed  to  me. 

One  day  we  devoted  to  the  lower  Thames,  going  by 
the  river  from  Westminster  down  to  Greenwich,  I 
pointing  out  as  we  sailed  on  the  penny-boat  everything 
that  had  any  literary  or  artistic  or  historic  interest  or 
tradition.  At  the  Charing  Cross  float  there  came 
aboard  two  ladies  of  my  acquaintance  to  whom,  after 
asking  their  permission,  I  introduced  my  two  Ameri 
can  boys  in  a  perfectly  informal  manner.  The  names 
of  none  of  them  meant  anything  to  the  others;  and  as 
we  passed  under  Waterloo  Bridge,  I  remarked: 

"  You  know,  you  fellows,  or  if  you  don't  know  you 
ought  to  know,  that  this  is  the  Bridge  of  Sighs, 

'  One  more  unfortunate, 
Rashly  importunate, 
Gone  to  her  death.'  " 

One  of  the  ladies  said : 

"  Is  it  really  the  Bridge  of  Sighs?  I  never  before 
realised  which  of  the  two  bridges  it  was.  And,  as  you 
know,  Tom  Hood  gave  my  husband  the  original  draft 
of  the  poem." 

This  naturally  excited  the  attention  of  the  two  young 
men  in  question.  As  we  went  on,  personally  conduct 
ing  the  boys,  I  discovered  that  the  ladies  had  drawn 
up  to  us  and  were  equally  eager  to  be  personally  con 
ducted,  lyondon  Bridge,  the  Tower, — all  these  things 
were  absorbed  and  gazed  at,  until  we  came  to  a 


a  fortunate  Woman          357 

quaint,  very  old-fashioned,  tumbled-down,  river-side 
public-house  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Thames.  As  we 
were  going  past  the  scene,  I  said: 

"  That  is  the  Three  Jolly  Fellowship  Porters,  of  Our 
Mutual  Friend,  in  which  John  Rokesmith  met  with  his 
disastrous  adventures." 

The  same  lady  said : 

"  Oh,  let  us  go  ashore.  I  have  tried  many  times  to 
discover  its  identity,  but  without  success.  I  shall 
never  forget  how  Dickens  took  my  husband  and  me  all 
through  it  one  day,  many  years  ago." 

My  young  friends  could  not  contain  themselves  any 
longer. 

"  For  gracious  sakes!  who  is  she?  Friend  of  Tom 
Hood;  friend  of  Charles  Dickens;  and  a  young  Ameri 
can  woman  !  For  gracious  sakes!  who  is  she  ?  " 

She  was  Mrs.  James  T.  Fields,  and  her  companion 
was  Sarah  Orne  Jewett. 

Joaquin  Miller  was  an  American  of  whom  I  saw 
much  in  L,ondon.  He  tells  this  characteristic  story  of 
Swinburne.  Swinburne  is  very  susceptible  to  bore 
dom,  it  seems,  and  suffers  a  good  deal  of  it  at  the 
hands  of  inquisitive  strangers  who  intrude  upon  him 
out  of  mere  idle  curiosity  and  take  up  a  good  deal  of 
his  time,  giving  nothing  in  return.  One  of  this  kind 
of  bores,  an  American  and  friend  of  Miller,  was 
anxious  to  be  taken  to  Swinburne's  house.  Miller  was 
under  obligation  to  Mr.  Lion-hunter,  and  did  not  like 
to  refuse  him.  He  knew  Swinburne's  peculiarities, 


358  ftalfcs  in  a 


and  dreaded  the  result;  still  he  went  and  sent  his  card 
to  Mr.  Swinburne  —  "  Joaquin  Miller  and  Friend." 
After  a  little  delay  the  maid-servant  returned,  but  in 
such  evident  confusion  that  Miller  knew  at  once  mat 
ters  were  not  smooth  upstairs,  and  that  she  had  a 
message  she  did  not  like  to  deliver.  This,  with  some 
persuasion,  he  got  out  of  her,  and  it  was  to  the  effect 
that  Mr.  Swinburne  would  be  very  glad  to  see  Mr. 
Miller,  but  his  "  friend  "  might  go  to  hell  ! 

Miller  would  not  be  unlikely  to  send  precisely  such  a 
message  as  this  himself,  under  similar  circumstances  ! 
His  eccentricities  are  very  marked. 

1  "  Brought  upon  the  outer  skirts  of  civilisation  with 
all  of  the  Border  training  and  with  the  true  *  poetic  tem 
perament  '  we  read  about,  which  chafes  at  social  rules 
and  laws,  it  is  natural  enough  that  he  should  not  ap 
pear  as  the  city-bred  people  in  ladies'  drawing-rooms, 
and  that  he  should  lack  the  ease  and  grace  which  only 
long  association  with  cultivated  people  can  give,  still  it 
is  evident  to  the  closer  observer  that  there  is  much 
affectation  in  his  queerness  and  a  little  straining  after 
effect.  His  wearing  several  diamond  and  red-  and 
green-stoned  rings  on  the  forefinger  and  little  finger  of 
both  of  his  hands,  his  placing  the  three  diamond  studs 
in  his  shirt  bosom  so  close  together  that  they  are  all 
apparent  even  with  a  high-buttoned  waistcoat,  the 
great  gold  chain  he  wears  and  his  constant  use  of  a 
toothpick  throughout  a  full-dressed  Arcadian  dinner, 
1  Extract  from  an  old  journal  of  1870. 


flDanneriems  359 


are  no  doubt  evidences  of  a  lack  of  easy  refined  educa 
tion,  for  which  he  is  not  responsible,  perhaps,  but  his 
abrupt  speech,  his  familiarity  with  ladies,  the  absurd 
and  fulsome  compliments  he  pays  them,  his  kissing  of 
their  hands  in  crowded  parlours,  and  his  brushing  of 
their  foreheads  with  his  fingers,  are  all  marks  of  what 
he  considers  *  genius,'  which  are  studied  by  him  to 
make  himself  conspicuous  by  his  eccentricities.  He  is 
very  fond  of  ladies'  society  and  of  the  sensation  he 
creates  among  them  and  of  the  attention  he  receives. 
He  goes  among  them  and  gushes  and  rhapsodises,  and 
talks  sentiment,  and  wishes  he  was  dead,  and  calls 
himself  the  loneliest  man  in  the  world,  and  gets  the 
female  sympathy  which  he  seems  to  crave. 

"  If  a  low-strung,  unromantic  man  should  enter  this 
charmed  female  circle  of  which  Miller  is  the  centre,  he 
immediately  relapses  into  boorish  silence  and  goes  into 
his  cell.  He  does  not  shine  among  men  unless  they 
are  molly-coddle  men  who  molly-coddle  him,  or  unless 
they  are  men  of  his  own  temperament,  whose  eyes  roll 
in  fine  frenzy  constantly  and  who  are  always  filled  with 
inspiration  and  celestial  fire. 

"Among  the  Swinburne  and  Rossetti  set  I  can  im 
agine  him  happy  and  contented.  Among  the  short- 
haired,  prosaic,  critical  men  who  go  to  Arcadian 
dinners  he  is  not  himself  at  all.  Among  men  he  says 
little  and  drops  none  of  the  pearls  of  poetry  and  senti 
ment  that  he  is  apt  to  spue  out  fully  in  the  society  of 
the  softer  sex.  He  told  Mrs.  Brooks  that  c  Tennyson 


360  £alfce  in  a  library 

was  a  dear  old  peanut.'  He  said  that  little  Gretchen 
Brooks  was  pretty  enough  to  set  in  a  ring.  After  he 
had  been  in  the  house  of  Mrs.  Brooks  three  minutes  on 
his  first  visit,  he  crawled  across  the  library  floor  on  his 
hands  and  knees  to  bite  Marjory  Brooks  on  the  leg. 
When  Mrs.  Brooks  sent  upstairs  to  ask  her  sister-in- 
law,  Mrs.  Hendricks,  to  come  down,  he  interrupted  by 
saying  he  did  not  want  her,  he  did  not  want  to  see 
anybody  else.  Mrs.  Brooks  told  him  she  did  not  care 
whether  he  wanted  to  see  anybody  else  or  not.  She 
wanted  her  sister  to  see  him.  He  said  he  wanted  to 
get  married;  wanted  a  fireside  and  children.  But  he 
wants  a  young  wife  and  one  with  money.  He  told  of 
a  delightful  flirtation  he  had  had  with  a  queer  sort  of 
girl  who  fascinated  him  by  her  odd  ways,  but  whom  he 
discovered  to  be  a  lunatic  and  who,  even  during  the 
time  of  his  companionship  with  her,  was  under  the  care 
of  a  keeper.  He  said  he  liked  lunatics.  He  asked 
permission  to  call  on  Mrs.  Brooks  in  Boston,  said  he 
would  not  take  her  address  then  (he  called  here  first  De 
cember  12,  1875)  f°r  h£  would  certainly  lose.it,  but  she 
would  see  his  arrival  noted  in  the  Boston  papers  and 
could  send  him  her  card  or  a  note  then.  He  told  a 
very  pretty  story  of  Prentice  Mul ford's  love-making, 
which  may  or  may  not  be  true,  but  which  he  told  in  a 
most  charming  manner.  His  reputation  for  veracity  in 
such  matters  is  none  of  the  best!  I  cannot  give  the  ro 
mance  in  his  own  words  (more  's  the  pity)  and  may 
not  remember,  after  the  lapse  of  a  few  weeks,  all  of  the 


a  Beggar  fIDaib  361 

incidents  as  he  gave  them.  He  is  very  fond,  it  seems, 
of  wandering  about  the  low  quarters  of  London  in 
search  of  adventure  and  in  the  study  of  character.  His 
evenings  and  his  late  nights,  many  of  them,  were  thus 
spent  in  this  London  stay.  In  this  way  he  became 
familiar  with  St.  Giles  and  St.  Giles  became  familiar 
with  him.  He  knew  personally  the  rough  element  of 
that  neighbourhood  and  won  to  a  certain  degree  its 
confidence  and  respect,  by  his  good  humour,  good 
deeds,  and  interest  in  them.  Himself  a  Bohemian  of 
the  Bohemians,  he  was  more  at  home  in  the  society  of 
the  lawless  London  beggar  and  thief  than  in  the  draw 
ing-rooms  of  Mayfair  and  Hyde  Park  which  were 
thrown  open  to  him.  In  one  of  these  excursions  of  his 
in  the  Seven  Dials  way,  with  Prentice  Mulford,  they 
fell  in  one  evening  with  the  prettiest  little  beggar  maid 
he  says  he  ever  saw.  She  was  a  child  of  about  four 
teen  years  of  age,  evidently  unused  to  the  profession, 
in  fact  not  of  the  profession,  and  one  who  would  have 
made  the  fortune  of  any  painter  by  her  beauty  and  the 
picturesque  effect  of  her  dress  and  action.  She  had  a 
companion  of  about  her  own  age  but  less  interesting. 
Both  men  were  greatly  struck  at  once  by  Josie  —  such 
was  the  Cinderella's  name— and  entered  into  conversa 
tion  with  her.  Miller  had  been  in  the  way  of  picking 
up  these  London  waifs  on  the  streets  when  they  par 
ticularly  interested  him,  and  taking  them  to  his  lodg 
ings,  where  he  had  them  washed,  no  doubt  to  the  disgust 
of  his  landlady,  and  after  he  had  got  out  of  them  all  he 


362  Galfce  in  a  library 

wanted  in  the  way  of  characteristic  speech  he  let  them  go 
with  a  shilling  or  so  in  their  pockets.  He  offered  Josie 
a  shilling,  two  shillings,  half  a  crown,  to  go  home  with 
him  and  have  tea.  Josie  was  willing  to  accept  the  shil 
ling,  but  her  mother  was  alone  with  a  sick  brother  and 
she  could  not  leave  her  so  long.  The  temptation  of 
half  a  crown  was  too  much  for  Josie,  however,  and 
finally  she  went  to  Miller's  lodgings  with  her  cousin, 
was  washed, — and  he  says  she  needed  it, — and  had  the 
first  good  meal  in  many  days.  She  told  her  story. 
Her  father  had  been  a  humble  tradesman  in  the  pro 
vinces,  had  been  unfortunate  in  business,  had  taken  to 
drink,  had  been  compelled  to  leave  his  native  town, 
had  come  to  London,  had  gone  from  bad  to  worse, 
dragging  his  family  with  him,  until  he  was  only  a  care 
and  a  disgrace  to  them,  contributing  nothing  to  their 
support. 

"After  tea  Miller  went  home  with  the  children,  dis 
covered  that  the  story  was  true,  made  the  acquaintance 
of  her  mother,  and  finally,  after  some  time,  adopted  the 
child,  introducing  her  to  the  kindly  friends  who  had 
been  interested  in  him  and  who,  for  his  sake,  and  then 
for  her  own,  became  interested  in  her.  She  was  given 
some  education,  and  during  the  Vienna  Exposition 
while  he  was  at  the  Austrian  capital  on  business,  he 
received  a  letter  from  Mulford  asking  permission  to 
marry  the  girl,  then  eighteen  years  old  or  less.  Miller 
consented,  and  Josie  became  Mrs.  Mulford. 

"  Mulford  himself  is  the  shyest  man  I  think  I  ever 


SDiffibent  flfean  363 


met,  in  this  respect  presenting  the  most  marked  con 
trast  to  his  friend  Miller.  I  met  him  first  at  Mrs. 
B  rooks  's  reception;  noticed,  in  a  common  chair  upon 
which  he  seemed  afraid  to  sit,  this  queer  man  with  a 
wistful,  far-away  look  in  his  eyes,  who  seemed  to  know 
nobody  and  whom  nobody  seemed  to  know.  His  still 
ness  in  that  crowd  where  everybody  seemed  to  talk  to 
everybody  was  peculiar  and  attracted  my  attention  to 
him.  A  little  later  when  Miss  Booth  said  she  wanted 
to  introduce  me  to  Prentice  Mulford,  I  knew  that  the 
timid  little  fair-haired,  light-eyed  person  must  be  the 
man.  He  seemed  to  be  unhappy  there,  to  want  to  get 
out  of  it  and  not  to  know  how. 

"  Until  I  began  to  see  more  of  him  and  to  know  him 
a  little  better,  I  could  make  but  little  out  of  him.  But  he 
can  be,  when  he  feels  at  home,  the  most  amusing  of 
men.  He  has  a  great  deal  of  dry  and  original  humour, 
a  quaint  and  peculiarly  Western  phraseology,  and  a 
timid,  halting  manner  of  speech  that  is  almost  an  im 
pediment  and  yet  is  not  an  impediment,  that  is  very 
attractive.  His  speech  and  conversation  are  full  of 
surprises.  His  art  comes  out  so  unexpectedly  to  his 
hearers  and  seemingly  to  himself  that  it  is  most  refresh 
ing  on  that  account.  How  far  it  is  spontaneous,  I 
cannot  say.  Certainly  of  all  the  band  of  Western  hu 
mourists  I  have  met  and  heard  —  and  I  've  met  them  all 
personally  except  Mark  Twain  —  [it  will  be  remembered 
that  this  was  written  in  1870],  Mulford  is  the  brightest 
in  genial  talk  with  people  with  whom  he  is  at  home, 


364  Galfee  in  a  library 

and  the  best  after-dinner  speech -maker.  He  is  deliver 
ing  a  series  of  Sunday-evening  talks  here  in  one  of  the 
uptown  halls  for  an  admission  of  ten  cents  with  but 
doubtful  success,  and  his  struggle  for  his  daily  bread 
is  no  doubt  hard  and  never-ceasing." 

Some  time  in  the  seventies  I  walked  over  from  the 
Piccadilly  side  of  London  with  Mr.  Henry  James,  Jr. , 
to  lunch  with  C.  P.  Cranch  and  his  family,  who  were 
lodging  opposite  Bloomsbury  Square.  We  were  met 
at  the  door  by  Mr.  Cranch  and  his  daughter,  and  we 
saw  that  Mrs.  Cranch,  standing  in  a  bow-window,  was 
in  earnest  conversation  with  a  gentleman,  whose  back 
was  turned  our  way.  In  a  moment  or  two  Cranch 
said:  "  Come  here,  Jim;  I  want  you  to  know  two  young 
countrymen  of  ours  and  friends  of  mine."  "Jim" 
came  forward,  and,  to  our  surprise,  "  Jim  "  was  James 
Russell  Lowell!  I  had  never  thought  that  any  man 
alive  could  call  him  "Jim."  My  companion  must 
have  known  him  before;  but  it  was  my  first  meeting 
with  the  man  whom  I  regarded,  even  then,  as  the  First 
Citizen  of  America.  He  was  quite  as  charming  in  his 
manner  as  I  had  found  him  in  his  books;  one  of  the 
most  entertaining  and  agreeable  persons  I  had  ever 
met,  and  one  of  the  handsomest  men,  physically,  I 
think,  I  ever  saw.  I  cannot  remember  anything  of  his 
conversation,  except  that  I  told  him  that  only  a  fort 
night  or  so  before  I  had  dined  at  his  own  house,  Elm- 
wood,  with  the  Ole  Bulls,  who  were  his  tenants;  and 
that  I  had  smoked  a  cigar  in  his  library,  and  had 


3ame0  IRussell  Xowell          365 

looked  at  the  backs  of  his  books,  finding  no  little  satis 
faction  in  reading,  among  the  many  titles,  works  of  all 
kinds  which  were  in  my  own  collection.  He  replied 
that  he  did  not  care  so  much  for  his  books  as  for  his 
trees;  and  could  I  tell  him  how  they  were  looking,  and 
how  they  were  feeling?  "  I  'm  sure  they  miss  me," 
he  said.  '  They  seem  to  droop  when  I  go  away,  and 
I  know  they  brighten  and  bloom  when  I  go  back  to 
them,  and  speak  to  them,  and  shake  hands  with  their 
lower  branches!"  He  spoke  seriously  and  tenderly, 
and  I  was  rewarded  with  a  very  appreciative  and  re 
sponsive  smile  when  I  replied,  "  They  half  forgive 
your  being  human." 

I  next  met  Mr.  I^owell  half  a  dozen  years  later,  when 
Booth  was  playing  at  the  Adelphi  Theatre,  in  L,ondon. 
I  was  sitting  in  Booth's  own  box,  with  his  wife  and 
daughter.  Between  the  acts  the  usher  announced 
"  The  American  Minister,"  and  I  arose  to  slip  out  and 
make  room  for  the  new-comer,  presuming,  of  course, 
that  I  had  been  entirely  forgotten;  but  he  stopped  me 
in  the  dark  passageway,  held  out  his  hand  in  his 
cordial  manner,  and  asked,  "  How  are  the  dear 
Cranches?" 

Ivowell  was  associated  with  one  of  the  most  curious 
experiences  of  my  life  —  curious  because  it  cannot  be 
explained. 

I  remember  distinctly  going  to  a  large  dinner  at  the 
Savage  Club,  in  London,  as  the  guest  of  Harry  Beckett, 
the  actor.  I  remember  distinctly  sitting  between 


366  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

Beckett  and  Samuel  Phelps,  at  the  lower  end  of  one  of 
two  long  tables,  far  away  from  the  raised  platform  upon 
which  the  guests  of  honour  were  placed.  I  remember 
that  it  was  at  the  time  of  an  unsuccessful  movement 
to  erect  a  monument  to  L,ord  Byron  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  and  that  the  members  of  the  Savage  Club  had 
subscribed  largely  for  the  testimonial,  and  were  greatly 
chagrined  at  the  opposition  raised  in  influential 
quarters.  I  remember  that  the  Prince  of  Wales  was  to 
have  presided  at  the  feast,  but  was  absent,  and  I  re 
member  wondering  afterwards  what  would  have  hap 
pened  if  he  had  been  in  the  chair.  I  don't  remember 
who  did  preside,  but  I  remember  that  the  several 
speakers  alluded  to  the  Byron  matter,  and  very  bitterly. 
And  I  remember  when  Lowell  arose  to  speak  that 
those  of  us  who  were  not  near  enough  to  catch  his 
words  crowded  forward  to  the  dais  in  order  to  miss 
nothing  of  his  wonderful  eloquence.  And  I  remember 
with  absolute  distinctness  that  this,  in  part,  is  what  he 
said,  clearly,  solemnly,  and  most  impressively:  "  The 
Dean  and  Chapter  of  your  great  Abbey  of  Westminster 
have  refused  a  resting-place  to  the  pedestal  of  a  statue 
of  one  of  the  greatest  of  your  poets,  in  the  ground 
which  is  polluted  by  the  rotten  ashes  of  the  mistresses 
of  your  kings ! "  I  remember  perfectly  the  effect  of 
these  words,  the  profound  silence  which  followed,  the 
catching  of  breaths,  the  looks  of  astonishment,  and 
then  the  sudden  outburst  of  enthusiasm  and  wild 
cheering. 


a  Bream  Dinner  367 

I  remember  all  this  as  if  it  happened  yesterday. 
And  yet  I  am  assured  that  it  never  happened  at  all.  I 
am  told  by  Mr.  Charles  Eliot  Norton  that  he  never 
heard  of  Lowell's  having  made  such  a  speech,  that  he 
hardly  thinks  he  could  have  made  such  a  speech. 
Beckett  and  Phelps  are  dead.  I  can  find  no  one  who 
ever  heard  of  such  a  dinner;  I  can  find  no  record  of 
it  in  any  of  the  L,ondon  journals.  I  could  not  have 
invented  it.  I  did  not  dream  it.  How  do  the  psycho 
logists  account  for  it  ? 


CHAPTER  XIV 

Longfellow — Emerson — Whittier— Celia  Thaxter — Louisa  M. 
Alcott— Kate  Field— Helen  Keller— Charles  Dudley  Warner 
— Certain  Treasures — Thackeray  Drawing  of  Thackeray — 
Fitz-Gerald  Book-Plate—Signatures  with  the  Hat — The 
Names  of  Literary  Men — Bret  Harte. 

WHILE  I  was  never  a  lion-hunter,  I  have  been  a 
worshipper  of  heroes  all  my  life,  and  I  have  worshipped 
chiefly  at  the  shrines  of  the  heroes  of  the  pen.  I  find 
it  even  now,  after  half  a  century's  experience  of  men 
and  things,  very  hard  to  believe  any  evil  of  the  personal 
character  of  the  writers  in  whose  books  I  see  nothing 
but  what  is  good.  By  their  printed  works  I  know  and 
judge  them  all.  Dickens,  in  my  youthful  mind,  was 
possessed  of  all  the  virtues  of  Tom  Pinch,  of  Traddles, 
of  old  Sol,  of  Esther  Somerson's  Guardian,  and  of  the 
Cheerible  Brothers;  and  to  me  the  elder  Dumas  was 
Athos,  Porthos,  and  d'Artagnan,  put  together  and 
combined  in  one. 

I  have  been  disappointed  once  or  twice,  but  not  of 
my  own  free  will,  and  if  we  make  believe  hard  enough, 
we  will  find  men,  and  even  heroes,  to  be  what  we  think 
they  ought  to  be  and  not  what  we  want  them  to  be. 

One  of  my  earliest  heroes  was  Mr.  Longfellow,  and 
368 


Ibero  TKHorebip  369 

when  I  went  to  Cambridge  for  the  first  time,  in  the 
middle  of  the  sixties,  I  thought  of  it  not  as  the  seat 
of  a  great  university,  but  as  Longfellow's  home.  I 
wanted  to  see  Craigie  House,  not  the  Washington  Elm. 
I  longed  to  meet  the  "village  blacksmith"  and  the 
"  youth  who  bore  the  strange  device,"  rather  than  all 
the  faculty  of  Harvard  College  put  together.  I  hung 
about  Craigie  House,  but  at  a  respectful  distance,  for 
hours,  getting  an  occasional  glimpse  of  the  beautiful 
white  head  at  a  window,  now  and  then  seeing  the  grand 
old  man  walking  about  his  garden,  and  once  I  met 
him  face  to  face  near  his  own  gate.  He  looked  as  if 
he  thought  I  were  somebody  else,  somebody  whom  per 
haps  he  knew,  but  I  had  not  the  courage  to  lift  my  hat. 

In  later  years  I  met  him  personally,  saw  him  seated 
in  his  own  library,  sat  near  him  at  Elmwood,  and  heard 
him  talk  about  music  to  Ole  Bull  or  about  the  drama  to 
Booth  or  Barrett,  but  I  never  said  much  to  him  nor  he 
to  me,  and  to  him  I  was  only  one  of  a  countless  num 
ber  of  young  men  who  crossed  his  path,  neither  making 
it  pleasanter  for  him  nor  getting  in  his  way.  I  was  too 
afraid  of  stepping  on  his  toes  to  try  even  to  step  over 
the  hedge  of  our  very  slight  acquaintance. 

His  life  was  very  simple  and  very  beautiful.  Every 
body  loved  the  man,  even  if  they  did  not  admire  the 
poet,  and  his  position  in  Cambridge  was  without 
parallel. 

I  remember  once  riding  from  Boston  to  Cambridge  in 

a  horse-car  which  chanced  to  pass  his  door.     It  was 

24 


370  ftalfce  in  a  Xibrar? 

comfortably  filled  after  it  left  Harvard  Square  with  men 
who  were  his  neighbours  or  his  friends:  as  he  entered, 
to  go  from  his  own  house  to  some  point  farther  along, 
every  man  rose  and  every  head  was  uncovered!  It  was 
simply,  unostentatiously  done,  and  as  a  matter  of 
course;  and  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  very  sweetly  and 
very  kindly,  he  accepted  it.  He  refused  the  seats 
which  were  offered  to  him  by  the  seniors  of  the  party, 
but  he  took  that  of  a  small  boy  who  was  with  the  rest 
and  with  his  hat  in  his  hand,  and  holding  the  little 
chap  —  who  accepted  it  as  a  matter  of  course  too  —  be 
tween  his  knees,  he  talked  to  him  until  his  destination 
was  reached.  This  was  a  spontaneous  tribute  to  worth 
and  genius  and  to  grey  hairs,  which  could  have  oc 
curred  in  no  other  land  under  the  sun  and  perhaps  to 
no  other  man  in  the  world  at  that  time. 

A  little  story  of  Mr.  L,ongfellow's  fondness  for  and 
attitude  toward  children,  and  of  their  devotion  to  and 
affection  for  him,  which  came  under  my  own  observa 
tion,  may  be  worth  telling  here. 

Arthur  Brooks,  a  lad  of  seven  or  eight,  was  sent  by 
his  mother  one  morning  with  a  note  for  Miss  Longfel 
low.  The  poet  opened  the  door  for  the  boy  and  took 
him  into  his  own  study  while  the  answer  was  being 
written.  The  two  entered  into  pleasant  conversation; 
and  Arthur  was  asked  what  books  he  was  reading. 
Jack  and  the  Bean  Stalk  was  at  that  time  the  subject 
of  his  absorbed  attention.  He  had  bought  the  volume 
—  highly  coloured  and  in  big  type  —  at  a  certain  toy 


jacfc  anb  tbe  3Bean  Stalfc       37T 

store  in  town,  and  he  enjoyed  it  thoroughly.  The 
price  he  mentioned  incidentally  was  five  cents.  Jack 
and  the  Bean  Stalk  was  also  a  favourite  with  his  host, 
who  had  not  read  it  for  years  and  was  exceedingly 
anxious  to  see  it  again.  The  boy  rushed  home  in  a  state 
of  great  excitement,  fished  a  five-cent  piece  out  of  his 
family  safe  on  the  mantel  —  he  would  not  permit  me  to 
lend  him  the  money;  it  must  be  his  own  money, — and  he 
hurried  away  to  the  Square  to  purchase  a  fresh  copy  of 
the  tale.  This,  without  taking  anybody  into  his  con 
fidence,  he  carried  at  once  to  Craigie  House,  rang  the 
bell,  and  asked  to  see  Mr.  Longfellow,  to  whom  the 
work  was  duly  presented.  It  was  received  with  all  the 
dignity  Mr.  Longfellow  could  assume,  and  the  donor 
was  thanked  as  heartily  as  if  the  gift  had  been  a  first 
folio  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  the  recipient  saying: 

"  Now,  Arthur,  if  you  will  write  your  name  and 
mine  upon  the  cover  "  (it  could  boast  no  fly-leaf)  "  you 
will  add  greatly  to  its  value  in  my  eyes  and  I  will  keep 
it  among  the  treasures  of  my  library." 

The  inscription  was  printed  in  big,  scrawling,  capital 
letters,  ' '  Arthur  H.  Brooks  to  his  friend  Mr.  Long 
fellow."  And  Arthur  was  escorted  to  the  door  with 
much  ceremony,  the  happiest  and  the  proudest  boy  in 
Cambridge  that  day. 

The  Longfellows  were,  and  justly  so,  the  reigning 
family  in  Cambridge;  their  friendship  was  a  patent  of 
nobility  in  that  university  town;  and  no  woman's 
social  status  was  established  until  she  had  exchanged 


372  aalfcs  in  a  library 

calls  with  Miss  Longfellow  or  her  sisters.  This  dignity 
was  thrust  upon  them.  They  were  quiet,  unassuming, 
dignified  young  ladies,  who  demanded  nothing  from 
their  neighbours,  and  who  put  on  no  airs.  I  remember 
once  that  Booth,  who  was  playing  an  engagement  in 
Boston,  sent  me  a  card  to  his  box  for  a  matine*e  per 
formance,  so  that  Mrs.  Brooks,  in  whose  house  I  was 
stopping,  might  bring  her  children  and  some  of  her 
young  friends  to  see  Richelieu  the  next  afternoon.  She 
included  the  Longfellows  in  the  invitation;  but  the  re 
gret  came  saying  that  unfortunately  papa  had  asked 
some  people  to  lunch,  and  of  course  they  could  not  ac 
cept.  There  was  no  hint  as  to  who  were  the  expected 
guests,  but  we  read  in  the  papers  the  next  day  that  the 
Marquis  of  Lome  and  the  Princess  Louise  had  lunched 
with  Mr.  Longfellow  and  his  daughters.  Who  but  an 
American  woman,  and  one  of  an  assured  position, 
would  speak  of  a  Govern  or- General  of  Canada  and  a 
Princess  of  the  Blood  Royal  of  England  as  '  *  some 
people"  ! 

A  curious  effect  of  the  benignity  and  purity  of  Mr. 
Longfellow's  presence  upon  the  actions  of  a  man  who 
was  forced  to  say  what  he  did  not  mean  and  what  he 
should  not  have  said  and  would  not  have  said  any 
where  else,  is  shown  in  a  little  incident  that  came  to 
my  knowledge.  This  particular  man  always  stood  up 
straight.  But  on  this  occasion  he  felt  that  he  had  to 
stand  up  so  very  straight,  that  he  fell  over  backwards  ! 

I  was  spending  the  Christmas  holidays  of  1875  or 


a  IHevo  gear's  )£\>e  373 

1876  with  the  Brookses,  in  Cambridge,  who  were  in 
vited  by  the  Longfellows  to  "  see  the  New  Year  in" 
and  took  me  with  them.  A  very  small  party  were 
assembled,  and  all  the  Longfellow  servants  had  gone 
to  a  ball.  We  talked  quietly  until  nearly  midnight, 
Mr.  Longfellow  joining  in  the  conversation,  and 
walking  backwards  and  forwards  between  his  study 
and  the  parlour  in  which  we  were  sitting.  At  last 
some  one  suggested  lemonade,  and  as  all  adjourned  to 
the  dining-room,  lemons  and  sugar  were  provided, 
rolled,  squeezed,  and  pounded  by  the  different  members 
of  the  company,  Mr.  Longfellow  superintending  it  all 
and  showing  great  interest  in  the  operation.  Water 
was  boiling  in  a  great  kettle  hanging  on  the  crane  in 
the  fireplace  and,  when  all  was  ready  and  the  decoc 
tion  complete,  Mr.  So-and-so — I  won't  mention  his 
name — was  asked  to  try  it  and  to  pronounce  judgment 
upon  it.  He  was  an  unusually  shy,  reticent,  pure- 
minded,  gentle,  clean-spoken  man,  and  we  all  waited 
anxiously  for  his  verdict.  He  raised  a  great  spoonful 
of  the  smoking  stuff  to  his  lips,  swallowed  it  at  a  gulp, 
and  said,  with  the  utmost  deliberation,  "  It  is  not  only 
damned  hot,  but  it  is  as  sour  as  hell !  " 

Violent  profanity  in  the  presence  of  the  Pope  of 
Rome  or  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  would  not 
have  been  more  unexpected  or  more  untimely.  I  shall 
never  forget  the  horrified  look  of  his  wife,  or  his  own 
startled  expression  when  he  realised  the  strength  of 
MS  words.  There  was  an  instant  of  awful  silence,  and 


374  Galfc0  in  a  Xibrar\> 

then  shouts  of  laughter.  The  old  poet  beamed  with 
unsurpassed  amusement,  and  taking  the  spoon  in  his 
own  hand  he  tried  the  potation  and  said,  in  his  gentle 
way,  "  Mr.  So-and-so  is  quite  right;  quite  right!  " 

I  don't  believe  Mr.  So-and-so  ever  uttered  another 
oath  in  his  life,  before  or  since,  and  why  he  lost  con 
trol  of  himself  in  that  marvellous  way  and  on  that 
particular  occasion,  he  was  never  able  to  explain. 

My  only  meeting  with  Emerson  was  a  very  casual 
one,  and  the  occasion  was  the  famous  Greek  play  at 
Harvard  in  1881.  He  sat  by  the  side  of  Longfellow, 
and  near  them  were  grouped  Agassiz,  Dr.  Holmes, 
Eliot,  Howells,  Higginson,  and  Aldrich.  As  he  left 
the  hall  on  Longfellow's  arm,  some  one  spoke  to  him, 
and  asked  how  long  he  was  to  stay  in  Cambridge,  and 
where  he  was  staying. 

"  I  am  visiting  my  dear  old  friend  here,"  he  replied, 
patting  Longfellow  on  the  hand,  "  Mr. — Mr. — Mr. — " 

He  had  forgotten  Longfellow's  name!  He  was  very 
feeble  in  body,  and  his  memory  had  almost  entirely 
failed.  But  he  was  very  beautiful  to  look  upon  and  so 
like  my  own  father  in  face  and  action  that  I  was 
startled  by  the  resemblance.  It  seemed  as  if  my  father 
had  come  back  to  me,  and  was  as  he  would  have  been 
had  he  lived  so  long. 

With  Miss  Longfellow  I  walked  to  the  door  of 
Craigie  House,  behind  the  two  magnificent  old  men, 
but  I  did  not  enter;  and  I  never  saw  either  of  them 
again. 


Mbittier  ant>  Gwo  3ofces       375 

The  only  time  I  ever  saw  Whittier  was  at  the  Isle  of 
Shoals,  where  he  was  the  guest  of  Celia  Thaxter.  The 
ordinary  person,  present  in  Mrs.  Thaxter's  drawing- 
room,  thought  the  necessary  thing  to  say  was  how 
much  they  admired  Whittier's  work.  He  had  heard 
the  remark  innumerable  times,  and  considered  of  no 
importance  any  reference  as  to  what  he  had  done  or  as 
to  what  he  had  written.  He  told  us  in  his  gentle  way 
that  such  remarks  reminded  him  of  what  had  been  said 
to  him  a  few  days  before  in  Portsmouth  by  a  lady  who 
had  admired  and  spoken  of  his  little  verses  called  Poor 
Lone  Hannah.  ' '  And ' '  he  said  with  a  twinkle  of  his 
old  eyes,  "  I  had  n't  the  courage  to  tell  her  that  Miss 
Lucy  Larcom  wrote  that  particular  poem." 

He  was  particularly  pleased  at  the  story  I  told  him 
a  propos  of  such  blunders,  of  a  young  woman  who  pro 
fessed  to  a  literary  stranger  her  profound  admiration 
for  Sir  Walter  Scott.  He  asked  her  how  she  liked 
Ivanhoe,  and  she  liked  it  immensely.  He  asked  her 
what  she  thought  of  The  Lady  of  the  Lake,  and  she 
thought  it  just  sweet.  Then  he  said: 

"And  now  tell  me  what  you  think  of  Scott's 
Emulsion" 

To  which  she  replied  that  she  thought  it  the  best 
thing  Scott  had  ever  written. 

The  funeral  of  Celia  Thaxter  must  have  been  a  most 
picturesque  and  pathetic  picture.  As  being  part  of  it 
I  did  not  see  it;  but  those  who  watched  the  black 
coffin,  covered  with  wild  flowers,  carried  over  the  rocks 


376  Galfcs  in  a  library 

from  her  cottage  to  her  grave,  on  the  little  island  of 
Appledore,  one  very  sad  grey  day  towards  the  end  of 
August,  1894,  speak  of  it  as  one  of  the  most  impressive 
sights  they  ever  witnessed.  The  simple  service  was 
held  in  the  parlour  so  intimately  associated  with  her 
for  so  many  years,  and  in  the  presence  of  her  own  peo 
ple  and  a  very  few  near  friends.  The  clergyman  read 
certain  lines  of  her  own,  repeated  the  Lord's  Prayer, 
William  Mason  played  one  or  two  of  her  favourite  airs 
on  the  little  piano,  and  that  was  all.  The  bearers,  her 
two  brothers,  J.  Appleton  Brown,  Childe  Hassam,  Dr. 
Stedman,  Dr.  Warren,  Coswell — who  had  been  in  the 
employ  of  the  L,eightons  as  fisherman  and  general  fac 
totum  for  thirty-five  years, — and  I,  carried  the  casket, 
followed  by  her  sons  and  their  wives.  And  with  our 
own  hands  we  lowered  it  into  the  open  grave.  The 
sky  was  dull  and  sorrowful;  the  many  servants  and 
guests  of  the  hotel  stood  about  the  burial  plot  in  groups, 
the  sea  was  moaning  on  three  sides  of  us  and  close  to 
our  feet;  and  the  birds  seemed  to  sing  sad  songs.  Bach 
person  present  who  was  near  to  her,  beginning  with  her 
oldest  son,  strewed  the  flowers  she  had  loved  over  what 
was  left  of  her;  and  we  walked  silently  away. 

She  had  been  ill  but  a  day  or  two.  We  saw  her  on 
the  Friday,  bright  and  cheerful,  listening  to  the  music 
of  Mr.  Mason,  surrounded  by  her  worshippers,  laugh 
ing  now  and  then  her  clear,  ringing  laugh.  As  she 
entered  the  dining-room  that  evening,  I  met  her  with 
my  hands  filled  with  the  letters  and  papers  which  the 


H  Beautiful  life  377 

mail  had  just  brought.  She  caught  me  by  the  lapel  of 
the  coat  as  I  passed  without  noticing  her,  she  turned 
me  half  around,  gave  me  a  little  pat,  and  said: 

"  Here  is  that  Mister  L,aurie  Hutton,  full  of  business 
as  usual." 

And  I  never  saw  her  again. 

On  the  Sunday  morning,  early,  with  her  pain  re 
lieved,  she  sat  up  in  her  bed  and  asked  her  daughter- 
in-law  to  open  the  shutters  that  she  might  see  the 
light.  And  without  warning,  she  went  at  once  to 
where  Light  is. 

Celia  Thaxter's  life  and  personality  were  absolutely 
unique.  She  was  carried  to  her  island  home  as  a  child, 
and  for  many  years  she  knew  nothing  else.  Her 
brothers  were  her  only  playmates,  and  her  only  play 
things  were  the  shells  on  the  beach.  The  children 
were  as  wild  and  as  unartificial  as  were  the  waves  and 
the  winds,  the  sea-birds  and  the  ocean  plants.  She 
knew  a  fisherman  or  two,  and  a  dun  cow.  It  was  a 
wonderful  school  for  a  poet  of  nature,  but  a  poor  school 
for  a  woman  of  society  or  of  the  world, —  and  this  lat 
ter  she  never  became.  So  long  as  she  lived  she  went 
but  little  into  the  world,  and  almost  the  only  world  she 
knew  was  the  small  fraction  of  the  world  which  came 
to  her.  Nature  was  her  only  teacher  until  she  became 
a  woman,  and  her  intercourse  with  her  fellow-beings, 
and  her  study  of  the  literature  of  the  ancients,  or  of  her 
contemporaries,  had  but  little  influence  upon  her  work. 
She  was,  as  a  writer,  as  unique  as  she  was  as  an 


37^  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

individual.  And  unique  —  that  hackneyed,  much- 
abused,  often  misapplied  word — is  the  only  word  which 
describes  Celia  Thaxter,  the  poet  and  the  woman. 

I  had  spent  some  portion  of  the  summers  of  ten  years 
at  the  Isle  of  Shoals,  and  my  wife  had  been  going  there 
for  upwards  of  a  quarter  of  a  century.  Naturally,  we 
knew  Mrs.  Thaxter,  and  knew  her  well;  although 
never  intimately.  We  did  not  belong  to  the  set,  and 
did  not  altogether  care  for  the  set,  of  men  and  women 
who  were  frequenters  of  her  daily  and  nightly  levees. 
The  atmosphere  of  the  place,  when  she  was  not  alone 
in  it,  seemed  to  us  to  be  artificial.  There  was  inflated, 
' '  high-falutin  ' '  gushing,  ultra-sentimental,  up-in-the- 
clouds,  far-away  talk,  which  the  talkers  themselves 
often  did  not  understand.  Kvery  one  appeared  strained 
and  unnatural,  to  be  always  on  intellectual  parade. 
And  there  was  always  an  element  of  the  critical  present 
which  contributed  nothing,  which  absorbed  everything, 
and  which  looked  phenomenally  wise,  particularly 
when  the  flights  .of  fancy  rose  so  high  that  they  were 
lost  in  the  mists  of  uuintelligibility, —  as  was  usually 
the  case.  The  hostess  was  generally  surrounded  by  a 
dozen  young  women  of  all  ages  who  adored  and  wor 
shipped  her;  and  by  commonplace  droppers-in  from 
the  hotel.  For  all  that,  Mrs.  Thaxter' s  guests  were 
sometimes  the  most  brilliant  men  and  women  of  the 
day,  and  what  was  said  there  was  often  well  worth 
listening  to.  Hawthorne,  L,owell,  Whittier,  William 
Hunt,  were  among  her  intimate  friends,  drawn  towards 


Celia  Gbaiter  379 

her  by  feelings  of  genuine  respect  and  affection.  She 
had  a  personal  magnetism  which  was  not  to  be  resisted; 
and  old  and  young,  the  ignorant  and  the  educated, 
came  under  its  influence. 

The  strongest  head  in  the  world  would  have  been 
turned,  and  the  simplest  nature  spoiled,  by  the  flattery 
and  adulation  so  openly  bestowed  upon  Celia  Thaxter 
for  so  many  years.  And  the  occasional  trace  of  her  arti 
ficiality  of  manner  which  sometimes  repelled  strangers, 
is  not  altogether  to  be  wondered  at.  These  affecta 
tions,  however,  were  reserved  for  the  crowd,  and  for  the 
crowd  of  a  certain  kind.  When  she  was  among  natural 
persons,  she  was  as  natural  as  any  of  them,  and  then 
her  full  charm  was  apparent,  and  then  the  true  Celia 
Thaxter  appeared.  She  was  a  handsome  woman  with 
a  sweet,  strong  face,  simply  dressed  always,  but  most 
effectively,  in  some  Quakerish  garb  of  grey  stuff  with 
soft  veiling  material  about  her  own  throat.  Her  hair, 
during  the  later  years  of  her  life,  was  quite  white;  and 
her  manner  was  invariably  cordial  and  cheerful.  The 
room  in  her  cottage,  in  which  she  held  her  court  was 
as  unique  as  everything  about  her.  The  walls  were 
crowded  with  water  colours,  original  drawings,  auto 
graphed  photographs,  copies  of  the  famous  master 
pieces  of  art,  and  medallions.  And  upon  the  shelves, 
and  mantels,  and  piano,  and  tables,  were  by  actual 
count  two  hundred  little  glass  vases  filled  with  the 
flowers  from  her  marvellous  little  garden  outside,  mak 
ing  a  mass  of  bright  and  delicate  colours  arranged  in 


380  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

harmonies  as  flowers  have  never  been  seen,  perhaps, 
before  or  since.  Here,  with  her  knitting  or  her  paint 
ing,  in  a  certain  corner  she  sat  every  forenoon  and 
every  evening,  chatting  or  listening  to  the  talk  about 
her,  or  better  yet,  to  the  songs- without- words  played  so 
sympathetically  by  William  Mason,  one  of  the  oldest 
and  most  cherished  of  her  friends.  Her  greatest  in 
terest  in  life  was  her  flowers.  She  was  in  her  garden 
(not  so  large  as  the  ordinary  grass  plot  of  a  city  back 
yard)  at  three  or  four  o'clock  every  morning,  watering, 
cherishing,  petting,  and  communing  with  her  plants. 
Celia  reigned  not  only  in  the  little  society  of  intelligent 
people  she  drew  around  her,  but  also  in  the  hearts  of 
the  fisher-folk  who  inhabited  the  little  group  of  islands 
known  as  the  Shoals.  Among  them  she  was  a  queen 
indeed;  and  as  good  and  as  great  a  queen  as  ever  won 
and  held  the  devotion  and  esteem  of  her  subjects. 
They  were  a  colony  of  simple,  hard-working  Swedes, 
to  whom  she  was  physician,  patron,  pastor,  friend. 
She  nursed  them  when  they  were  ill;  named  their 
babies;  shared  their  joys  and  sorrows.  And  it  is  pleas 
ant  to  think  that  two  of  these  Swedish  girls,  Mina,  and 
the  Nicolina  whom  she  has  almost  immortalised  in 
verse,  were  with  her  at  the  last  and  caught  her  in  their 
arms  as  she  died. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  speak  of  Mrs.  Thaxter's 
position  as  an  author.  Of  that  the  world  will  judge  for 
itself.  But  as  to  Mrs.  Thaxter's  powers  as  a  reader,  I 
must  say  a  word  or  two.  Her  Little  Sandpiper  she 


H  Satisf actor?  Cbat  381 

recited  with  rare  skill  and  feeling,  and  I  have  seen  her 
auditors  literally  moved  to  hysterics  as  she  related  the 
story  of  the  Murder  at  Smutty  Nose — which  I  consider 
one  of  the  strongest  pieces  of  prose  in  the  English 
language, 

I  never  met  Miss  Louisa  M.  Alcott  but  once  and  that 
for  a  few  moments  only,  at  the  house  of  Miss  May  L. 
Booth,  of  Harper1  s  Bazar.  The  occasion  was  a  large 
reception  given  to  Miss  Alcott  who  was,  naturally,  the 
centre  of  observation  and  the  one  object  of  attention. 
All  the  writing  men  and  women  of  Miss  Booth's  ac 
quaintance  were  present,  and  I  merely  exchanged  a 
word  with  the  lady,  as  I  entered  the  rooms,  and  passed 
on  to  make  way  for  the  next  new-comer.  Late  in  the 
evening  I  found  myself  upon  a  sofa  by  her  side,  and 
alone;  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  half  an  hour's  cosy 
commonplace  uninterrupted  chat  with  her,  talking  to 
her  as  if  she  had  been  anybody  else  and  upon  the  ordi 
nary  topics  of  the  day.  When  Miss  Booth  approached 
to  present  some  very  belated  visitor,  Miss  Alcott  said, 
to  my  great  satisfaction : 

"  Oh,  don't  take  this  young  man  away.  He  is  the 
only  person  who  has  not  mentioned  Little  Women  to 
me  to-night ! " 

I  was  taken  one  evening  by  Oliver  Lay,  in  the  early 
sixties,  to  call  on  Kate  Field,  then  living  with  her 
mother  in  Twenty-sixth  or  Twenty-seventh  Street, 
west  of  Sixth  Avenue,  in  New  York .  She  was  writing 
editorials  for  the  Herald  on  a  salary  of  five  thousand 


382  Galfcs  in  a  library 

dollars  a  year,  which  was  considered,  in  those  days,  an 
enormous  price;  and  she  was  looked  upon  as  the  most 
promising  young  woman  in  her  profession  in  America. 
For  thirty  years  or  more  we  were  excellent  friends, 
meeting  in  all  parts  of  the  New  World  and  the  Old. 
We  spent  six  weeks  with  her  in  Paris  during  the  year  of 
the  Exposition  of  1878.  We  saw  much  of  her  in  Lon 
don  before  and  after  that.  She  knew  my  wife  before  I 
did,  and  all  our  relations  with  her  were  most  pleasant 
and  intimate.  She  was  a  woman  with  a  good  deal  of 
brain  and  a  great  deal  of  heart — sympathetic,  loyal, 
and  very  generous.  On  many  points  we  did  not  agree; 
but  upon  no  subject  did  we  ever  quarrel.  I  have 
known  her  to  put  herself  to  no  little  trouble  and  ex 
pense  to  help  those  who  had  no  claim  upon  her;  and  I 
have  known  her  to  demand  a  good  deal  of  help  from 
those  upon  whom  she  had  no  claim.  She  was  a  curious 
admixture  of  sentiment  and  assurance.  She  was  an 
indefatigable  worker,  quick  and  ready  with  her  pen 
and  her  tongue.  She  was  blessed  with  a  good  deal  of 
practical  common-sense,  and  yet  she  did  many  foolish 
things.  She  made  many  warm  friends,  and  she  an 
tagonised  friends  whom  she  could  not  afford  to  lose. 
She  was  ambitious,  self-assertive,  and  self -advertising; 
but  she  was  the  soul  of  honesty  and  honour.  She  had 
a  feminine  side,  with  all  her  masculinity  and  angu 
larity,  and  there  was  a  gentleness  and  sweetness  about 
her  which  the  world  did  not  suspect.  She  was  bitterly 
treated,  but  I  never  heard  her  speak  bitterly.  She 


a  Clever  Woman  383 

fought  a  hard  fight  against  the  world,  and  she  fought 
it  alone.  She  never  hit  a  man  when  he  was  down,  and 
she  never  hit  a  false  blow.  She  said  what  she  thought, 
without  regard  to  the  ultimate  effect  of  her  speech  upon 
herself.  She  had  a  good  deal  of  tact,  and  yet  some 
times  she  was  utterly  tactless.  She  was  a  stanch 
friend,  and  never  a  cruel  enemy.  She  made  many 
mistakes.  She  had  a  hard  life  and  not  a  very  success 
ful  one;  but  she  never  lost  her  self-respect,  and  she 
never  forfeited  the  respect  of  those  who  have  known 
her.  She  lived  alone,  even  as  a  young  and  not  unat 
tractive  girl;  she  went  about  the  world  alone  and  unat 
tended;  yet  she  never  laid  herself  open  to  reproach  or 
insult;  and  no  word  against  the  purity  of  her  private 
character  has  ever  been  uttered. 

She  was  one  of  the  cleverest,  most  self-contained, 
most  self-sustaining  women  of  her  generation  in  any 
country,  and  hers  was  one  of  the  most  contradictory  in 
dividualities  I  have  ever  known.  But  the  good  always, 
and  largely,  predominated  over  the  bad.  She  never 
had  a  home.  She  died  alone  as  she  lived  alone.  And 
I  am  sure  she  died  like  the  brave  woman  that  she 
was. 

Kate  Field's  innate  sense  of  honour,  honesty,  and 
justice,  was  shown  in  a  most  characteristic  way  in  her 
last  will  and  testament,  executed  in  Washington  in  the 
midsummer  of  1895.  After  arranging  for  the  disposi 
tion  of  her  body,  which  was  to  be  cremated  and  placed 
between  the  coffins  of  her  father  and  mother  at  Mount 


384  Galfcs  in  a  library 

Auburn,  Cambridge,  she  made  certain  personal  be 
quests  to  those  who  were  nearest  to  her  by  blood  or  by 
affection;  to  Mr.  S.  W.  White  of  Brooklyn  she  left  the 
"  Walter  Savage  L,andor  Album,"  as  payment  of  a  loan 
of  five  hundred  dollars,  and  to  Mr.  John  K.  Searles  of 
New  York,  a  drawing  by  Gainsborough,  in  payment 
of  one  thousand  dollars,  invested  by  him  in  Kate  Field 's 
Washington  shortly  before  she  was  forced  by  ill  health 
to  suspend  its  publication.  These  were  all  she  had  of 
money  or  of  sentimental  value,  and  with  her  all  she 
paid  as  far  as  she  could  her  great  debts. 

Among  the  interesting  women  I  have  known,  Helen 
Keller  has  a  prominent  place.  We  first  met  her  in  the 
rooms  of  Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge.  I  cannot  give  ex 
pression  to,  nor  can  I  altogether  explain  to  myself,  the 
impression  she  made  upon.  us.  We  felt  as  if  we  were 
looking  into  a  perfectly  clean,  fresh  soul,  exhibited  to 
us  by  a  person  of  more  than  usual  intellect  and  intelli 
gence,  freely  and  without  reserve.  Here  was  a  creature 
who  absolutely  knew  no  guile  and  no  sorrow;  from 
whom  all  that  was  impure  and  unpleasant  had  been 
kept;  a  child  of  nature  with  a  phenomenally  active 
mind,  one  who  knew  most  things  that  were  known  to 
men  and  women  of  mature  age  and  the  highest  culture, 
and  yet  who  had  no  thought  of  evil  in  her  heart,  and 
no  idea  that  wickedness  or  sadness  exists  in  the  hearts 
of  others.  She  was  a  revelation  and  an  inspiration  to 
us.  And  she  made  us  think  and  shudder,  and  think 
again.  She  had  come  straight  from  the  hands  of  God, 


uut 
Inr.tk  tL*. 


LoVL 


HtL 


m 


HELEN  KELLER  AND  HER  DOQ 
(Copyright  1902,  by  Emily  Stokes) 


1bden  Ikeller  385 


and  for  fourteen  years  the  world  and  the  flesh  and  the 
devil  had  not  obtained  possession  of  her. 

Physically  she  was  large  for  her  years,  and  more 
fully  developed  than  is  the  every-day  girl  of  her  age. 
Her  face  was  almost  beautiful,  and  her  expression 
charming  to  behold,  in  its  varying  changes,  which 
were  always  bright.  Her  features  were  regular  and 
perfect.  And  she  moved  one  to  tears  even  when  one 
was  smiling  with  her. 

Speechless,  sightless  since  she  was  a  year  and  a  half 
old,  remembering  absolutely  nothing  of  sight  or  of 
sound,  she  has  been  taught  in  some  miraculous  wray  (to 
me  as  marvellous  as  the  science  of  astronomy)  to  ex 
press  herself  rapidly  in  the  sign-language,  and  even  by 
the  vocal  organs.  Her  voice  in  the  beginning  was 
harsh,  and  mechanical,  and  metallic,  but  distinct;  and 
her  articulation  still  is  slow,  but  clear.  She  has  no 
sense  of  the  sound  she  utters,  but  she  utters  it  plainly 
enough.  Her  teacher,  Miss  Sullivan,  told  her  (by  the 
sign-language)  that  I  had  written  a  book  about  Edin 
burgh,  and  she  said,  "  Edinboro  must  be  a  pretty  city," 
giving  it  the  proper  pronunciation,  "  Edinboro,"  with 
which  those  who  are  ignorant  of  Scotland  are,  as  a 
rule,  so  rarely  familiar. 

She  had  been  taught  to  hear  by  the  touch.  She 
placed  her  forefinger  on  the  lips  of  the  speaker,  and 
with  her  thumb  and  little  finger  on  the  throat  and 
vocal  chords  she  caught  what  was  said,  and  repeated 

it  in  her  turn. 

25 


386  ftalfce  in  a  Xibran? 

She  seems  to  have  a  sixth  sense.  She  receives  and 
understands  somehow  what  of  course  she  cannot  hear. 
The  devotion  she  has  for  her  teacher  is  beyond  all 
words ;  her  absolute  dependence  upon  that  teacher  is 
inexpressibly  touching ;  and  when  some  one  spoke  of 
this,  and  wondered  what  would  become  of  Helen  in 
case  of  any  separation,  the  child,  hearing  nothing  of 
course,  turned  to  the  teacher,  and  pulling  her  face 
towards  her  own,  kissed  her  on  the  lips,  as  if  to  say 
she  could  not  think  of  it.  This  to  me  was  the  most 
startling  of  all  her  actions — almost  an  evidence  of  psy 
chological  impression.  She  had  perceived,  through 
some  unconscious  movement  of  the  teacher's  hand, 
which  she  held,  the  teacher's  own  inmost  feelings  at 
the  suggestion  of  this  idea — perhaps  a  new  one  even  to 
her;  certainly  one  never  before  entering  the  head  of  the 
child.  Miss  Sullivan  told  us  that,  with  no  conscious 
movement,  no  intentional  or  perceptible  "  talking  with 
her  fingers,"  she  could  make  the  child  follow  her  own 
thoughts,  do  what  she  wished  her  to  do,  go  where  she 
wished  her  to  go,  perform  any  of  the  acts  of  "  mind- 
reading"  which  the  professional  psychologists  exhibit 
on  the  stage,  or  in  an  amateur  way.  The  teacher, 
however,  was  not  aware  of  anything  like  phenomenal 
thought-transference.  She  could  not  control  the  child 
except  by  the  power  of  touch.  She  repeated  the  story 
of  Helen's  first  experience  of  death,  of  her  first  notion 
that  anything  like  death  had  ever  come  into  the  world. 
They  had  entered  a  cemetery  with  her — a  word  of 


Sigbt  to  tbc  Blinb  387 

which  she  knew  nothing,  a  place  concerning  the  sig 
nificance  or  the  use  of  which  she  knew  nothing,  when 
the  child  suddenly  began  to  weep  and  to  ask  what  it  all 
meant.  This,  however,  the  teacher  ascribed  to  nothing 
more  than  the  child's  phenomenal  perception  of  the 
unexpressed  feelings  of  those  about  her.  Death,  and 
the  idea  of  death,  she  never  then  seemed  to  have 
grasped.  All  sad  thoughts  and  lessons  had  been 
kept  away  from  her.  She  was  familiar  with  history, 
as  she  was  familiar  with  all  literature.  She  knew 
that  men  and  women  are  now,  have  been,  and  are 
not;  but  with  their  going  away,  and  where  to,  and 
why,  she  had  not  concerned  herself.  No  doubt  she 
thought,  simply,  that  they  had  gone  back,  for  a  time, 
to  the  sightlessness  which  still  possessed  her;  back 
to  the  absence  of  the  sense  of  hearing  from  which 
she  suffered — although  not  unpleasantly, — back  to  the 
condition  of  want  of  speech  from  which  she  was  just 
emerging. 

She  had  read,  of  course,  all  the  books  for  the  blind 
which  had  come  within  her  reach;  and  her  teacher  had 
read  to  her  the  standard  works,  not  only  in  English, 
but  in  other  tongues.  Speaking  of  Edinburgh,  she 
was  perfectly  familiar  with  Scott's  association  with  the 
beautiful  old  city,  and  she  told  me,  vocally,  that  she 
had  * '  read ' '  Ivanhoe  and  Quentin  Durward.  She 
knew  Mark  Twain's  works,  and  laughed  at  the  mere 
mention  of  his  name.  She  knew  Mrs.  Kate  Douglas 
Wiggin's  stories,  and  when  we  told  her  of  Mrs. 


388  £alhs  in  a  library 

Wiggin's  approaching  wedding  she  quoted,  out  loud, 
"  Patsey's"  remark  about  somebody  that  "  she  'd  be 
married  the  first  chance  she  got."  She  asked  the 
happy  gentleman's  name ;  girl-like,  she  wanted  to 
know  if  he  was  good-looking,  and  she  was  pleased  to 
hear  him  so  reported.  And  then  she  said,  vocally 
always,  "  What  a  queer  combination,  the  doubling  of 
the  double  'g's' — Riggs-Wiggin!  " — thus  exhibiting, 
with  all  her  deafness,  some  miraculous  sense  of  sound. 
She  said  she  loved  Mrs.  Wiggin  and  wanted  to  meet 
her.  She  also  loved  Mark  Twain,  and  she  laughed 
heartily  at  some  little  characteristic  story  of  the  gentle, 
serious  humourist,  which  her  teacher  translated  to  her. 
It  reminded  her  of  a  scene  in  the  Old  Homestead ;  and 
then  we  learned  that  she  had  "  seen  "  the  comedy,  and 
knew  all  about  it.  When  I  told  her  of  its  presentation 
at  Keene,  New  Hampshire,  where  the  scenes  are  laid, 
and  that  the  spectators  there  were  disappointed  in  it, 
and  said  "  it  was  not  acting,  but  just  a  lot  of  fellows 
going  about  doing  things,"  she  was  greatly  pleased, 
and  spoke  of  the  difference  in  the  "  point  of  view  " — 
the  phrase  being  her  own. 

She  laughed  at  everything.  She  smiled  with  every 
one.  Everything  was  pleasant  to  her.  Everybody 
was  good.  God  grant  that  she  may  never  find  out  the 
innate  cussedness  of  things  and  of  men! 

When  one  asked  her  if  she  thought  she  saw  and 
heard  in  her  dreams,  she  replied,  at  once  and  with 
strong  emphasis,  "  I  am  sure  I  do."  But  nothing  that 


attainments        389 


she  had  dreamed  could  she  remember  to  tell  us.  It 
was  all  forgotten  when  she  awoke,  she  said. 

Mrs.  Dodge's  little  grandson,  to  amuse  her,  put  into 
her  hands  a  toy  engine  and  car,  when  she  immediately 
asked,  "  Where  are  you  going  to  on  the  train  ?  "  She 
was  given  a  little  bronze  figure  of  a  bull,  and  was  told 
it  was  by  Barye.  She  did  not  recognise  it  as  Barye's 
work,  and  said  so.  And  she  was  right.  Then  she  was 
handed  another  piece  of  sculpture,  and  she  said  at  once, 
"  That  's  a  Barye  lion."  And  again  she  was  right. 

She  already  wrote  an  excellent,  strong,  clear,  char 
acteristic  hand.  The  letters  were  firm  and  upright, 
and  there  was  no  blot  or  blur.  Her  composition  was 
better  than  that  of  most  women  twice  her  age.  She 
had  three  type-writing  machines,  containing  different 
combinations  of  characters,  upon  each  of  which  she  ex 
pressed  herself  as  regularly,  as  orderly,  and  as  rapidly 
as  could  any  professional  worker  on  that  instrument  ; 
and  no  one  seeing  her  '  *  copy  '  '  would  for  a  moment 
imagine  under  what  dreadful  difficulties  it  had  been 
made. 

To  a  Miss  Herrick  to  whom  she  was  introduced  she 
spoke  of  the  great  poet  who  bore  the  same  name.  Her 
familiarity  with  literature  and  history  was  far  beyond 
that  of  any  child  of  fourteen  of  whom  I  ever  knew  or 
heard.  And  her  memory  of  what  she  had  learned  was 
as  phenomenal  as  is  anything  about  her  miraculous 
career.  Her  powers  of  concentration  then  as  now  were 
of  course  heightened  and  intensified  by  the  isolation  of 


390  Galfce  in  a  library 

her  surroundings.  She  is  not  distracted  or  attracted  by 
disturbing  sights  and  sounds,  as  other  mortals  are;  and 
t^e  time  we  spend  in  seeing  and  in  listening  are  spent 
by  her  in  thought. 

Helen  came  to  see  us  at  our  own  house  a  week  or 
so  later.  And  there  she  met,  by  a  prearranged  plan 
of  ours,  Mr.  Howells  and  "Mark  Twain" — for  the 
first  time,  and  to  her  own  great  pleasure  and  theirs. 
She  was  prepared  to  see  Mr.  Clemens,  but  Mr,  Howells 
was  a  delightful  surprise  to  her  They  both  talked  to 
her — through  the  teacher  and  through  her  own  delicate 
sense  of  touch  on  the  lips.  ' '  Mark  ' '  told  her  stories, 
serious,  comic,  and  curious,  and  she  understood  and 
appreciated  and  enjoyed  them  all.  She  asked  how  he 
came  to  adopt  his  nom  de  plume — the  words  are  her 
own.  He  repeated  the  already  well-known  tale.  Told 
her  that ' '  Mark  Twain  ' '  meant  a  depth  of  twelve  feet, 
and  that  it  was  used  because  the  sound  of  the  word 
"Twain"  "carried  farther"  than  the  words  "two 
fathoms. ' '  This  she  comprehended  at  once.  Then  he 
added  that  it  had  been  the  pseudonym  of  another  pilot, 
and  that  he,  Mr.  Clemens,  took  it  and  used  it  when  the 
original  had  gone  into  port  and  did  not  need  it  any 
more.  And  Helen  added,  "And  you  made  it  famous!  " 
He  said,  in  his  serio-comic  way,  that  it  was  not  inap 
propriate  to  him,  because  he  was  sometimes  light  and  on 
the  surface,  and  sometimes — "  Deep,"  interrupted  the 
child.  She  felt  his  hair  and  his  face  in  a  tender,  in 
quisitive  way — the  only  one  of  us  whom  her  curiosity 


Gbe  Sense  of  £oucb          391 

prompted  her  to  examine  in  that  manner — in  order  to 
satisfy  herself  as  to  how  he  "  looked."  A  few  of  the 
violets  we  had  given  her  she  selected  and  put,  herself, 
into  the  proper  button -hole  of  his  coat.  He  was  pecu 
liarly  tender  and  lovely  with  her — even  for  Mr.  Clemens 
— and  she  kissed  him  when  he  said  good-by.  Ten 
minutes  after  she  supposed  he  had  gone,  and  after  their 
adieus  had  been  made,  he  came  into  the  dining-room 
where  she  was  taking  a  cup  of  tea,  and  put  his  hands 
on  her  head  in  passing;  and  she  recognised  at  once  the 
mere  touch  of  his  fingers  on  her  hair,  although  she  did 
not  know  that  he  was  still  in  the  house.  She  recog 
nised  every  one  of  us  by  the  touch,  although  there 
were  but  two  of  us  whom  she  had  ever  met  before,  and 
them  but  once.  As  she  sat  on  the  sofa  we  approached 
her,  in  turn,  and  she  knew  us  all,  even  Mrs.  Hazle- 
hurst,  whom  she  called,  at  once,  by  an  entirely  un 
familiar  and  uncommon  name,  though  she  had  simply 
met  her  as  she  entered  the  room. 

We  all  talked  to  her  in  turn.  She  asked  about  my 
dogs,  and  I  repeated  some  of  the  rhymes  I  had  written 
about  them,  foolish  and  silly  enough.  But  she  under 
stood  all  the  jingle  and  all  the  plays  upon  words,  and 
she  said,  "  Why,  you  are  a  humourist  too."  I  wish 
she  were  right. 

When  Mrs.  Hutton  said  to  her,  "  I  believe  you  like 
to  talk  to  strangers,  Helen,"  she  replied  immediately, 
"  But  there  are  no  strangers  here."  And  she  said 
once,  a  propos  of  nothing — "How  many  books  you 


392  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

have!  "  She  had  come  directly  from  the  library  door 
to  her  sofa.  She  had  not  been  told  that  it  was  a 
library.  She  had  had  no  intimation  that  there  was  a 
book  in  the  room. 

In  the  dining-room  I  "  showed"  her  a  quaint  little 
wineglass  in  the  shape  of  a  thistle.  She  felt  it,  recog 
nised  at  once  the  flower  it  represented,  and  hesitated  to 
accept  it  when  I  told  her  that  I  wanted  her  to  carry  it 
home,  in  remembrance  of  me.  And  when  I  explained 
that  it  was  one  of  a  set  brought  from  Scotland  years 
before,  and  dearly  prized  by  my  mother,  that  but  one 
of  them  had  ever  been  given  away,  and  that  one  by  the 
mother  to  the  wife  that  now  is,  and  long  before  there 
was  any  thought  of  such  a  thing  in  the  minds  of  any 
of  us,  she  drew  my  face  to  hers  and  kissed  me— twice. 
I  felt  that  I  had  received  a  benediction. 

She  was  peculiarly  affectionate  and  demonstrative  in 
her  disposition.  And  she  bestowed  her  innocent  kisses 
upon  persons  of  all  ages  and  of  either  sex  as  freely  and 
as  guilelessly  as  the  ordinary  girl  of  fifteen  would  be 
stow  a  harmless  innocent  smile. 

She  came  to  us  again,  just  before  the  last  Christmas, 
to  meet  Miss  Ellen  Terry,  by  especial  request  of  both 
of  them  ;  and,  naturally,  they  were  mutually  delighted 
and  impressed.  A  number  of  her  friends  and  ours 
dropped  in  during  the  afternoon,  and  the  child  was 
peculiarly  happy  among  us  all.  Mrs.  Hutton  had 
bought  for  her,  as  a  Christmas  gift,  a  little  plaster  cast, 
which  she  recognised  as  a  lioness,  admiring  the  free- 


Characterisation        393 


dom  and  action  of  its  movements.  When  the  author 
of  Timothys  Quest  entered,  I  said,  "  This  is  a  literary 
lioness,  Helen,  but  you  can  only  look  at  her  ;  she 
belongs  to  Mr.  Riggs."  When  the  author  of  Hans 
Brinker  came  I  said,  "  Helen,  this  is  the  biggest  liter 
ary  lioness  in  the  whole  show."  With  a  smile,  and  a 
caress  for  Mrs.  Dodge,  she  replied,  at  once,  "All  the 
lionesses  \i\your  menagerie  are  very  gentle!  " 

When  she  was  presented  to  Mrs.  Sangster,  whom  she 
had  never  met  before,  she  said,  "  But  your  name  should 
be  Songster,  you  sing  so  sweetly." 

After  the  guests  had  gone  their  different  ways  Helen 
staid  behind  "  to  talk  them  over";  and  thus  she 
summed  up  Miss  Terry:  "  Her  voice  is  soft,  gentle, 
and  low,  and  full  of  pathos.  She  is  quite  as  divinely 
tall  as  I  had  pictured  her,  but  not  so  slender.  She  is 
full  of  tender  sympathy.  I  am  not  at  all  disappointed 
in  her.  And  when  I  spoke  to  her  of  her  children  she 
kissed  my  hand!  " 

At  Sir  Henry  Irving'  s  invitation  she  went  to  the 
theatre  to  see  Charles  the  First  /  and  before  the  per 
formance  she  was  carried  by  Mr.  Stoker  to  the  dressing- 
room,  where  she  saw  the  mimic  King  and  Queen. 
entirely  equipped  for  their  parts.  She  examined,  care 
fully,  every  detail  of  costume,  wig,  and  "  make-up"; 
and  then,  from  her  seat,  she  listened  to  the  story  of  the 
pathetic  play,  as  it  was  told  to  her  by  Miss  Sullivan, 
through  the  medium  of  the  sign-language,  communi 
cated  in  some  miraculous  manner  from  hand  to  hand, 


394  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar\> 

On  her  way  to  the  theatre  she  had  told  the  teacher 
that  she  did  not  care  for  Charles ;  that  she  did  not  ad 
mire  his  character ;  that  she  thought  he  was  foolish 
and  selfish,  if  not  actually  in  the  wrong.  On  her  way 
home  from  the  theatre  she  confessed  that  she  had  seen 
him  in  an  entirely  new  light,  that  now  she  not  only 
pitied,  but  loved  him! 

The  teacher  interested  and  impressed  us  almost  as 
much  as  did  the  pupil.  Greater  love,  greater  devo 
tion,  greater  patience  never  were  known.  A  whole  life 
has  been  given  up  to  one  beautiful,  unselfish  object, 
with  no  hope  of  reward  here.  And,  if  the  theory  is 
true  that  in  the  next  life  we  are  to  carry  on  the  work 
we  have  done  in  this,  what  reward  can  she  have  here 
after?  In  the  world  to  which  she  is  going  there  will 
be  no  blind,  no  deaf,  no  dumb  to  teach,  no  helpless  to 
care  for ;  the  fruit  of  knowledge  will  grow  upon  every 
tree,  and  all  the  souls  will  be  protected  and  saved. 

During  the  ten  years  that  have  passed  since  that  first 
meeting  with  Miss  Sullivan  and  her  pupil,  they  have 
been  closely  allied  to  us  in  many  ways.  The  Story  of 
My  Life  Helen  has  herself  told  ;  and  she  has  noted  in 
her  modest  way  her  wonderful,  almost  phenomenal 
progress  and  development.  Certain  little  examples  of 
what  she  has  said  and  done  to  us,  and  before  us,  in  our 
social  circle  are  perhaps  worth  repeating. 

After  the  Princeton  house  was  finished  and  furnished 
in  1899,  she  was  very  anxious,  as  she  said,  to  "  see  it." 
Familiar  as  she  was  with  the  old  home,  she  was  natur- 


H  peculiar  Sensitiveness       395 

ally  greatly  interested  in  the  new.  Under  Miss  Sulli 
van's  guidance  and  with  me  as  prompter,  she  examined 
the  library  thoroughly,  being  told  as  she  touched  them 
what  the  various  objects  were  and  how  they  looked  to 
eyes  that  could  see.  When  she  came  to  a  certain  cast 
hanging  on  the  wall,  I  asked  Miss  Sullivan  not  to  tell 
Helen  the  name  of  the  original.  Miss  Sullivan  replied 
that  this  she  could  not  possibly  do,  in  view  of  her  own 
ignorance  regarding  the  matter. 

Helen  felt  every  feature,  wonder  and  uncertainty 
expressed  in  her  face  ;  and  her  fingers  dwelt  particu 
larly  on  the  lower  part  of  the  image,  returning  thereto 
and  lingering  about  the  chin.  Finally  she  exclaimed  : 

"  Why,  it  looks  like  Lincoln!  " 

And  it  was  Lincoln,  taken  from  the  living  face  be 
fore  the  beard,  with  which  she  herself  was  so  familiar, 
had  been  allowed  to  grow.  It  was  the  first  time  she 
had  "seen"  Lincoln  without  the  hair  upon  his  face. 
This  recognition  is  all  the  more  remarkable  when  it  is 
considered  that  many  persons  with  all  their  faculties 
have  not  been  able  to  identify  the  cast.  And  then 
Helen  said :  ' '  O  that  I  could  see  the  bare  chin  of 
Grant.  So  much  is  expressed  in  the  chin;  and  I  seem 
to  know  Lincoln  better  than  I  did  before." 

Helen's  peculiar  sensitiveness  to  all  vibration  was 
shown,  one  day,  in  a  most  startling  manner.  She  had 
knocked  in  some  way  two  empty  glasses  at  the  table 
and  made  them  ring.  Apparently  unconscious  of  any 
thing  unusual  or  remarkable,  she  placed  her  fingers  on 


396  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrarp 

each  tumbler  to  break  the  sound,  doing  precisely  what 
some  one  else,  with  all  his  normal  senses,  had  done,  of 
course  without  her  knowledge,  under  similar  circum 
stances  and  at  the  same  table  a  few  minutes  before. 

Vibration  to  her  is  noise.  She  will  ask,  ' '  What  is 
that  noise  ?  ' '  feeling  the  noise  even  before  the  noise  is 
heard  by  those  of  natural  hearing  about  her. 

When  a  group  of  young  persons  of  Helen's  own  age 
were  invited  to  meet  her  one  bright  summer  afternoon 
in  the  gardens  of  the  home  in  Princeton,  they  amused 
themselves  for  a  time  on  the  bowling-green  and  else 
where  about  the  lawn,  doing  things  with  balls  and 
golf-sticks  and  bows  and  arrows  which  naturally  were 
beyond  the  power  of  Helen,  with  all  her  wonderful 
facility  of  amusing  herself  as  do  other  girls  and  boys 
Some  one,  seeing  her  sitting  alone  for  a  moment,  took 
her  hand  and  said: 

"  You  and  I,  Helen,  seem  to  be  out  of  all  this  play." 

And  Helen  replied: 

"Oh,  but  you  know  that  I  am  like  a  music- box. 
My  play  is  shut  up  inside  of  me ;  and  there  is  plenty 
of  it!" 

Here  follow  a  few  of  her  personal  letters,  taken  at 
random,  most  of  them  written  after  the  publication  of 
her  book,  and  none  of  them  appearing  in  it. 

In  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Hutton,  when  the  latter  was  in 
Venice  in  1895,  Helen  writes : 

"  Please  give  my  kindest  love  to  Mr.  Hutton,  and 


letters  397 


Mrs.  Riggs  [Kate  Douglas  Wiggin]  and  Mr.  [Charles 
Dudley]  Warner  too,  although  I  have  never  had  the 
pleasure  of  knowing  him  personally.  As  I  listen 
Venicewards,  I  hear  Mr.  Hutton's  pen  dancing  over 
the  pages  of  his  new  book.  It  is  a  pleasant  sound  be 
cause  it  is  full  of  promise.  How  much  I  shall  enjoy 
reading  it!  " 

' '  From  the  regions  of  eternal  snow  and  ice  [she  had 
just  been  reading  about  Dr.  Nansen  and  his  wonder 
ful  vessel,  the  Fram\  I  descended  into  the  fair  forests 
and  mountain  glens  of  Scotland,  where  dwelt  the 
Lady  of  the  Lake  in  the  days  of  old.  I  think  it  is 
a  great  poem,  full  of  startling,  splendid  passages,  and 
with  an  air  of  romance  all  through  it ;  but  I  cannot 
help  being  glad  that  the  poem  belongs  to  the  past  and 
not  to  the  present,  and  that  the  endless  wars  and  strug 
gles  which  it  celebrated  are  over  for  ever ;  for  I  see, 
through  the  shadowy  veil  of  romance  that  Scott  has 
drawn  over  those  times,  the  ruin  and  desolation  and 
sorrow  which  were  as  much  a  part  of  those  struggles  as 
the  heroic  exploits  of  Roderick  Dhu  and  his  warriors. ' ' 

"  Dear  me,  what  a  bother  money  is.  I  really  think 
it  would  be  a  perfectly  lovely  world  if  we  did  n't  have 
to  think  about  money.  Why,  we  can't  even  live  with 
out  it,  which  seems  very  strange  indeed,  especially 
when  we  think  how  beautifully  Nature  manages  with 
out  spending  a  cent.  The  trees  and  flowers  have  put 
on  the  loveliest  Spring  suits,  and  they  have  n't  cost 


398  Galfcs  in  a 


them  a  penny.  Happy  trees  ;  happy  flowers  ;  I  would 
that  we  were  like  them." 

"  WRENTHAM,  August  27,  1903. 
'  '  DEAR  UNCLE  LAURENCE  : 

"  The  other  day  we  went  on  the  trolley  to  visit  the 
Wayside  Inn  of  Longfellow's  tales,  and  passed  through 
Way  land,  where  the  first  public  library  in  Massachu 
setts,  and  the  second  in  the  United  States,  was  built  in 
1850.  The  Inn  was  extremely  interesting.  Nearly 
all  the  old  furniture  was  gone  ;  but  we  saw  the  *  bar  ' 
and  the  old-fashioned  ball-room  and  the  room  in  which 
Lafayette  slept  one  night;  also  the  one  in  which  Long 
fellow  had  thought  out  so  many  of  his  verses.  On  the 
doors  and  walls  were  inscriptions  and  verses  which 
painters  and  poets  had  written.  The  picture  of  *  fairy 
Mary,  Princess  Mary  '  from  which  Longfellow  copied 
some  lines  in  the  tales  was  there  ;  also  the  swords  and 
guns  of  the  Hessian  soldiers." 

"  CAMBRIDGE,  October  16,  1903. 

"  .     We  returned  to  Cambridge  the  ist  of 

October,  and  my  work  is  now  under  way.  I  have  this 
year  two  Latin  courses,  Tacitus  the  first  term  with 
Professor  Morgan,  and  Plautus  with  Dr.  Moore.  The 
other  two  are  English  literature  of  the  nineteenth  cent 
ury  and  Shakespeare.  The  plays  we  read  this  year 
are  Othello,  Hamlet,  Henry  F.,  Antony  and  Cleopatra, 
and  Winter  s  Tale.  I  have  been  re-elected  vice-presi 
dent  of  my  class  and  made  Honorary  Member  of  the 


HELEN  KELLER     MISS  SULLIVAN,  MARK  TWAIN,  AND   LAURENCE  HUTTON 


©ptimiem  399 


'  English  Club,'  and  the  '  Classical  Club.'  I  have  en 
tered  upon  my  Senior  year,  and  I  am  looking  forward 
with  gladness  to  the  end  of  my  college  work.  I  do  not 
mean  that  my  college  life  has  not  been  happy.  There 
have  been  discouragements,  it  is  true,  and  hard  work 
which  has  tasked  my  powers  to  the  utmost,  but  I  feel 
that  it  has  been  worth  while.  I  am  glad  I  came.  I 
shall  be  glad  to  go.  I  am  better  prepared  for  what  the 
future  holds  of  activity  for  me,  and  the  fact  that  work 
is  open  to  me  is  a  precious  thought.  I  am  most  grate 
ful  to  the  college  for  what  it  has  done  for  me,  and  to 
the  friends  who  have  given  me  this  splendid  oppor 
tunity  to  try  my  strength  with  others. 

"  I  am  now  writing  a  little  essay  on  Optimism,  and 
I  hope  it  will  be  finished  in  time  for  the  Christmas  sale. 
I  was  very  unwilling  at  first  to  undertake  any  extra 
work  this  year,  but  it  was  urged  that  the  essay  would 
help  on  the  sale  of  my  book.  I  think  I  wrote  you  that 
it  was  not  selling  very  well.  Mr.  Bok  and  others  think 
the  book  has  not  been  properly  advertised,  and  they 
advised  this  way  of  calling  attention  to  it. 

"  L,ast  August  I  wrote  a  short  article  called  '  Look 
ing  Forward,'  for  the  November  number  of  The  Ladies^ 
Home  Journal  with  the  same  object  in  view." 

"CAMBRIDGE,  November  4,  1903. 

"  At  last  I  have  finished  the  essay  on  Optimism  ! 
Dear  me,  what  troublesome  children  of  the  mind  these 
essays  are  !  I  have  worked  from  sun  to  sun,  and  half 


400  Galfca  in  a 


the  night  to  boot,  and  at  times  I  have  positively 
thought  that  if  I  kept  on  long  enough  I  should  become 
'a  proverb  of  industry  '  in  New  England.  The  proofs 
are  coming  every  day,  and  I  think  the  essay  will  be 
out  this  month.  There  is  to  be  a  picture  of  me  in  my 
cap  and  gown  in  the  book,  and  you  may  see  for  your 
self  how  very  important  I  feel." 

"  CAMBRIDGE,  December  8. 

"  To-day  I  received  letters  from  Dr.  Hale,  Mr. 
Mitchell,  editor  of  Life,  and  President  Roosevelt,  and 
each  had  a  kind  wish  for  the  little  book.  .  .  . 

"I  have  had  an  interesting  letter  from  a  'bronco 
buster  '  in  Nevada.  His  spelling  is  a  miracle  of  in 
genuity;  but  I  don't  know  that  it  is  any  queerer  than 
Shakespeare's.  The  man  has  read  my  book,  and  says 
it  reminds  him  of  a  great  drove  of  cattle  which  he 
herded  once,  and  he  goes  on  to  describe  a  blind  steer 
which  got  on  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the  herd.  He  calls 
me  'little  broncho'  and  says  that  'Miss  Sullivan's 
ideas  are  all  right  '  ;  that  '  a  colt  must  lurn  by  ex- 
pereances.' 

"  I  am  getting  many  letters  from  England  now. 
You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  The  Story  of  My  Life  has 
reached  its  seventh  edition  there/' 

'  '  Thinking  of  those  whom  we  love  is  almost  like 
having  them  with  us.  Every  thought  flash  we  send 
out  to  them  seems  to  bring  a  pleasant  word  or  smile  in 


A  CARICATURE   OF  THACKERAY  BY   HIMSELF 


Marking  of  Boofis        401 


response,  and  all  our  day  is  brightened,  and  the  hardest 
tasks  are  easy.     .     .     ." 

"  I  think  Greek  is  the  loveliest  language  that  I  know 
anything  about.  If  it  is  true  that  the  violin  is  the 
most  perfect  of  musical  instruments,  then  Greek  is  the 
violin  of  human  thought." 

4  '  .  .  .  Now  I  feel  as  if  I  should  succeed  in  doing 
something  in  mathematics,  although  I  cannot  see  why 
it  is  so  very  important  to  know  that  the  lines  drawn 
from  the  extremities  of  the  base  of  an  isosceles  triangle 
to  the  middle  points  of  the  opposite  sides  are  equal  :  the 
knowledge  does  n't  seem  to  make  life  any  sweeter  or 
happier,  does  it  ?  On  the  other  hand,  when  we  learn  a 
new  word,  it  is  the  key  to  untold  treasures.  .  .  ." 

*  *  .  .  .  The  Iliad  is  like  a  splendid  youth  who 
has  had  the  earth  for  his  play-ground.  .  .  ." 

The  average  writer  of  books,  going  into  a  book-room, 
no  matter  how  large  or  how  small  the  collection,  is  apt 
to  cast  his  eye  immediately  upon  one  of  his  own  vol 
umes.  The  first  time  Charles  Dudley  Warner  came 
into  my  library,  he  walked  directly  to  a  certain  shelf 
and  picked  out  his  own  Backlog  Studies  —  then  just 
published.  He  looked  over  it,  and  saw  that  it  was 
pencilled  and  interlined.  He  had  marked  in  many 
books,  himself,  the  passages  that  appealed  to  him; 
but  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  that  anybody  had 


402  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

ever  cared  enough  for  what  he  had  written  to  mark 
him. 

We  happened  to  be  talking  that  night  about  Dickens, 
the  man  rather  than  the  writer,  as  to  whether  he  was  a 
good  man  or  not :  and  Warner  turned  to  his  own  little 
volume  in  question  and  read  three  or  four  lines  among 
them  which  I  had  designated:  "  I  don't  believe  that 
the  world  has  a  feeling  of  personal  regard  for  any 
author  who  has  not  been  loved  by  those  who  knew  him 
most  intimately." 

I  knew  Warner  most  intimately;  and  my  feeling  for 
him  was  one  not  only  of  personal  regard,  but  of  abso 
lute  love.  In  society  he  was  quiet  but  most  sympa 
thetic  and  appreciative.  He  was  one  of  the  best  of 
listeners.  While  I  can  remember  thousands  of  words 
he  had  written,  I  can  hardly  remember  one  word  he 
said,  although  he  never  said  a  word  that  was  not  worth 
remembering. 

I  saw  him  first,  of  all  places,  in  the  crowd  on  Epsom 
Downs,  on  a  certain  Derby  Day  many  years  ago,  where 
he  had  gone  and  I  had  gone  to  make  copy  for  our  re 
spective  newspapers.  He  had  no  interest  in  the  horses, 
and  as  I  had  no  interest  in  the  horses,  we  were  there 
simply  to  study  and  to  reflect  the  crowds;  he  doing  it, 
naturally,  in  a  way  which  was  much  better  than  mine. 

One  of  the  most  treasured  of  my  possessions — if  it  is 
authentic — is  a  pencil  drawing  of  Thackeray,  supposed 
to  have  been  done  by  Thackeraj  himself.  I  cannot, 
unfortunately,  speak  with  authority  in  the  matter.  It 


EDWARD  FITZ-QERALD 


ftbacfcera^a  Caricature        403 

is  done  in  pen  and  ink,  it  represents  Thackeray  with 
a  big  head — which  Thackeray  certainly  had, — with  a 
small  body  in  the  shape  of  an  hour-glass,  and  with 
human  bones  for  legs  and  arms.  It  bears  the  inscrip 
tion  on  the  top:  "  There  's  a  skeleton  in  every  man's 
house,"  and  it  is  signed  in  a  hand  very  like  Thackeray's 
with  Thackeray's  own  name.  It  was  given  to  me  over 
a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  by  Mr.  John  Crerar  of 
Chicago,  who  founded  the  Crerar  Library,  and  whom 
I  know  to  have  been  a  friend  of  Thackeray.  The  tradi 
tion,  which  I  fondly  hope  to  be  true,  is  that  Thackeray, 
during  one  of  his  visits  to  America,  drew  it  and  gave  it 
to  Crerar,  who  gave  it  to  me.  The  story  is  that  the 
hour-glass  and  its  flowing  sand  represented  the  hurry 
in  which  Thackeray  was  always,  in  a  social  way,  dur 
ing  his  sojourn  in  the  United  States.  He  had  so  many 
engagements  to  luncheons,  to  dinners,  and  to  suppers; 
he  was  so  much  in  demand;  he  had  so  few  moments  to 
spare  between  this  house  and  that;  that  he  was  literally 
haunted  by  the  fact  that  he  was  a  slave  to  time.  He 
had  only  twenty  minutes,  or  half  an  hour,  or  an  hour, 
between  invitations;  and  the  skeleton  in  the  house  of 
the  friends  who  were  so  kindly  disposed  toward  him 
was  his  hurry  to  get  from  one  entertainment  to  another. 
Mr.  Crerar,  and  every  one  who  could  give  me  any 
information  regarding  the  drawing,  has  gone  to  join 
Thackeray  in  the  country  where  Art  is  long:  and  I 
have  been  unable  to  verify  what  I  want  to  feel  in  my 
heart  to  be  Thackeray's  caricature  of  himself. 


404  Galfcs  in  a  library 

In  my  collection  is  one  of  the  rarest  and  most  highly 
prized  of  British  book-plates, — that  of  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald,  prized  not  only  because  it  is  Fitz-Gerald's,  but 
also  because  it  was  designed  and  drawn  by  Thackeray. 
The  figure,  queer  in  itself,  is  said  to  have  had  for  its 
model  Mrs.  Brookfield;  but  this  is  a  very  uncertain 
supposition.  The  face,  indistinctly  rendered,  is  not 
unlike  that  of  Mrs.  Brookfield;  but,  while  Mrs.  Brook- 
field  had  wings  no  doubt,  they  were  not  visible  in 
the  flesh.  A  few  years  ago  a  collector  of  Ex  Libris 
came  to  me  in  great  tribulation  because  he  had  not 
succeeded  in  buying,  at  an  auction  sale,  the  Thackeray- 
Fitz-Gerald  boo^-plate,  the  price  being  far  beyond  his 
limit.  He  said: 

* '  I  suppose  you  know  the  plate  ? ' ' 

"  Yes,"  I  said,  "  and  I  possess  a  copy  which  is  em 
phatically  It !  It  was  given  me  by  Harry  Edwards,  the 
entomologist  and  actor,  and  an  intimate  personal  friend 
of  the  author  of  Omar  Khayyam.  It  contains  the  fol 
lowing  inscription  in  the  handwriting  of  Fitz-Gerald 
himself: 

"  Done  by  Thackeray  one  day  in  Coram  ("  ?oram  ")  Street  in 
1842.     '  All  wrong  on  her  feet,'  he  said :  I  can  see  him  now. 

"E.  F.  G. 
"March  19,  1878." 

While  I  fail  somehow  in  my  appreciation  of  Fitz- 
Gerald's  great  work,  which  is  in  spots  sometimes  be- 
j'ond  my  comprehension,  I  have  a  great  respect  for  the 
man.  This  book-plate  of  his  with  its  autograph  en- 


t~*t    C  /*--*•'         ••'••  ^         t^/.VA*-* 

/" 

^  '-  r, 


Cv  /      / 


, 


THE  RTZ-QERALD  BOOK-PLATE,  DRAWN,  BY  THACKERAY 


a  literary  1bat  405 

dorsement,  and  an  etching  of  a  drawing  of  Fitz-Gerald, 
in  his  old  age,  by  Charles  Kean,  I  would  rather  pos 
sess,  almost,  than  the  original  manuscript  of  Omar 
Khayyam  itself. 

A  literary  curiosity  that  I  have  is  the  card  of  auto 
graphs  that  was  sent  me  with  a  new  hat. 

I  had  been  wearing  for  a  long  time  what  my  friends 
considered  an  exceedingly  shabby  hat,  but  one  which 
I  considered  was  good  enough  for  me,  when  on  Christ 
mas  Day  (1891)  there  came  to  my  address  a  castor 
bought,  by  subscription,  by  a  number  of  my  friends, 
and  carrying  with  it  a  paper  containing  many  words  in 
prose  and  verse,  relating  to  the  hat  and  to  the  head  it 
was  intended  to  cover.  As  a  specimen  of  ingenious 
good-fellowship  these  autograph  inscriptions  are  per 
haps  worth  preserving,  not  because  of  any  wonderful 
intrinsic  merit  of  their  own,  but  on  account  of  the 
great  variety  of  talent  displayed  in  so  many  various 
ways.  Mr.  Drake  had  no  opportunity  to  make  his 
mark  upon  the  paper  until  after  it  was  framed,  so  he 
set  his  seal  upon  the  mat. 

I  was  stricken  speechless  by  the  gift.     My  only  reply 
was  a  circular  note  complaining  that  the  hat  was  with 
out  the  narrow  band  of  crape  which  I  always  wore,  and  t 
asking  for  the  further  subscription  of  fifty  cents  each  to 
remedy  the  deficiency. 

The  reference  to  ' '  Dunlap  * '  has  a  double  meaning, 
the  hatter,  and  William  Dunlap,  the  earliest  historian 
of  the  American  stage,  who  gave  his  name  to  a  literary 


406  Galfcs  {n  a  library 

organisation  of  stage  lovers  and  book  lovers  who 
founded  a  society  for  the  reprinting  of  obsolete,  obso 
lescent,  and  current  affairs.  Nearly  all  the  men, 
notably  Mr.  Jefferson  and  Mr.  Bunner,  who  made  the 
play  upon  the  name  ' '  Dunlap ' '  were  active  members. 

Mr.  Jefferson  contributed  this  additional  poem  on  a 
separate  sheet : 

A  HAT  FOR  BUTTON 

Bombasties  Furioso  't  was  who  said, 

"  A  hat  can  do  no  harm  without  a  head." 

But  Laurence  has  a  head  that 's  done  much  good, 

With  brain  developed,  be  it  understood. 

This  is  the  kind  of  Hat  I  'd  choose  for  him, 

Bell-crowned  at  the  top,  curl}7  as  to  brim , 

Black  and  stately  as  an  old  gondola, 

Smooth  and  silky  as  a  young  Angora  ; 

Smooth  and  shapely  in  its  bold  exterior, 

With  his  virtues  writ  in  the  interior. 

Worn  by  him  alone — for  none  should  share  it, — 

If  this  Hat  will  fit  him  let  him  wear  it. 

j.  JEFFERSON. 

Writing  men  seem  to  think  that  there  is  a  good  deal 
in  a  name,  and  perhaps  it  is  true.  Names  that  are  not 
commonplace  somehow  seem  to  carry  books  and  maga 
zine  articles;  and  men  who  are  still  known  familiarly 
to  their  personal  friends  as  "Jiin"  or  "Jake"  are  known 
to  the  world  by  some  more  euphonious  name  which 
as  certainly  belongs  to  them  and  which  they  have  made 
more  famous  than  they  could  ever  make  "Sam"  or 
"Bob."  The  first  edition  of  Bayard  Taylor's  Views 
Afoot — we  are  told  on  the  title-page — was  the  work  of 
James  B.  Taylor ;  Brander  Matthews  was  christened 


^Unfamiliar  IRamee  407 

"  James" ;  Hopkinson  Smith  was  christened  "  Frank"; 
and  Rodman  Drake  was  "  Joseph." 

One  night  when  there  had  come  to  us  the  news  of 
the  death  of  a  very  well-known  and  exceedingly  popu 
lar  American  author,  he  was  discussed  in  a  most  feeling 
way  in  a  monologue  talk  of  an  hour  or  two  by  Mark 
Twain.  To  my  surprise  nobody  seemed  interested  in 
the  conversation,  although  it  is  very  seldom  that  Mr. 
Clemens  does  not  have  an  attentive  audience,  no  mat 
ter  what  his  subject  may  be.  When  our  guests  were 
gone,  Mrs.  Hutton  'asked  Clemens  why  he  had  disap 
pointed  so  many  who  were  ready  to  hang  on  his  words, 
by  talking  about  the  personality  of  an  unknown  man 
of  whom  they  had  never  heard  and  in  whom  they  could 
have  no  possible  interest,  when  it  suddenly  struck  the 
two  of  us,  who  knew  what  we  were  talking  about,  that 
Bret  Harte — who  was  the  subject  of  the  theme — could 
not  of  course  be  identified  with  the  ' '  Frank ' '  Harte 
about  whom  so  much  had  been  said.  He  was  * '  Frank' ' 
to  Clemens,  and  always  will  be  * '  Frank ' '  to  Clemens, 
just  as  he  was  "  Frank  "  to  everybody  in  the  old  Cali 
fornia  days,  and  when  he  first  came  to  the  Hast.  He 
began  to  write  as  F.  B.  Harte,  then  as  Francis  B.  Harte, 
then  as  Francis  Bret  Harte,  and  he  is  going  down  to 
posterity  as  "  Bret  Harte,"  and  as  nobody  else. 

Of  Bret  Harte  I  have  seen  more  or  less  for  the  last 
five  years.  My  first  introduction  to  him  was  peculiar. 
I  had  never  seen  him  to  know  him,  although  I  had 
been  interested  in  him  for  a  long  time  and  had  read  and 


ftalhs  in  a  library 


thoroughly  enjoyed  everything  he  ever  wrote.  I  knew 
him  as  a  clever  writer  long  before  I  knew  anything 
about  him,  and  before  he  was  famous.  I  take  a  little 
satisfaction  to  myself  in  having  discovered  him  for  my 
self;  and  in  having  been  one  of  the  most  ardent  admirers 
of  his  peculiar  style  before  it  was  the  fashion  to  be  so. 
I  picked  up  a  country  paper  somewhere  in  which  was 
his  Higgles,  and  read  it  with  the  most  intense  delight, 
and  made  up  my  mind  that  the  author  of  that  sketch 
was  a  wonderful  fellow  who,  if  he  lived,  would  make 
his  mark.  That  he  has  made  his  mark  there  can  be 
no  question  now,  and  even  if,  as  some  of  his  critics  say, 
he  is  not  destined  to  last  or  to  be  read  by  the  next  gen 
eration,  he  certainly  is  read  in  this  as  very  few  living 
American  writers  are  read;  the  fact  that  he  has  received 
from  the  Scribners  the  highest  price  ever  paid  for  a  single 
novel  (Gabriel  Conway]  in  this  country,  is  proof  of  the 
popularity  and  the  high  value  publishers,  who  are  the 
best  judges  of  public  taste,  put  upon  him.  Shortly 
after  the  announcement  of  a  new  edition  of  his  Con 
densed  Novels  in  1871,  I  went  into  Button's  book-store 
to  get  the  volume,  sat  down  in  a  quiet  corner  to  look 
through  it,  laughed  heartily  over  the  clever  burlesque 
of  the  style  of  popular  story  writers,  and  said  to  Clapp, 
who  stood  by  me,  "  That  Bret  Harte  is  a  wonderful 
fellow."  Mr.  Clapp  said,  "  Indeed  he  is  that;  and  this 
is  the  gentleman  himself,"  presenting  a  quiet  little  man 
who  had  stood  by  looking  at  me,  but  whom  if  I  had 
even  seen  I  had  not  noticed,  as  Mr.  Bret  Harte  ! 


S^££eK^/f^  ;&<*+., 


LETTER  BY  JEFFERSON,  SENT  WITH  A  NEW  HAT  FOR  LAURENCE  HUTTON 


Gbe  Sumping  ]frog  409 

Whether  Mr.  Harte  looked  upon  this  as  an  intentional 
bit  of  flattery  on  my  part,  I  never  knew.  I  tried  to 
assure  him  of  my  utter  innocence  of  his  presence.  At 
all  events,  from  that  time  on,  we  became  excellent 
friends,  although  never  intimates;  and  my  association 
with  him  ever  since  has  always  been  of  the  pleasantest. 
He  was  amazing  in  conversation;  told  a  good  story 
with  much  of  the  dramatic  effect  that  makes  his  writ 
ing;  was  full  of  anecdotes  and  ready  to  see  anything 
marked  or  peculiar  or  characteristic  in  the  people 
about  him,  and  to  improve  upon  it  in  the  repetition  or 
description  of  it.  L/ike  all  writers  he  is  open  to  flattery, 
and  nothing  in  his  life  probably  pleased  him  more  than 
the  praise  given  by  Dickens  to  his  early  poems  and 
sketches,  as  described  by  John  Foster  in  Dickens' s 
Life.  He  told  me  one  day  of  Mark  Twain's  Jumping 
Frog  story  and  of  the  first  time  Mark  Twain  ever  told 
it.  He  had  heard  it  in  some  far  Western  bar-room 
among  the  stories  of  like  character  that  are  so  often 
told  at  such  places;  had  remembered  it,  but  had  been 
attracted  more  by  the  manner  of  the  man  who  told  it 
than  by  the  yarn  itself.  This  he  attempted  to  imitate 
in  repeating  the  story  to  Harte,  and  was  not  a  little 
surprised  at  the  delight  with  which  the  frog's  ad 
ventures  were  received  by  Harte.  He  had  no  great 
opinion  of  it,  but,  at  Harte' s  suggestion,  published 
it  and  made  by  it  his  first  reputation  in  his  peculiar 
vein.  How  many  good  things  are  told  by  people  and 
done  by  people  who  are  utterly  unconscious  of  the 


410  £alha  in  a  Xibrar? 

good  thing  they  are  guilty  of  until  the  world  discovers 
it  and  points  it  out.  Harte  told  me  that  nothing  ever 
surprised  him  more  than  the  marvellous  success  (mar 
vellous  to  him)  of  his  spurt,  The  Heathen  Chinee. 
He  had  written  it  in  a  minute,  had  thought  nothing 
of  it,  had  thrown  it  aside,  when  it  was  picked  up  by 
somebody  by  chance,  and  put  in  a  corner  of  the  maga 
zine  to  fill  up  a  space,  for  want  of  better  "copy." 
Probably  no  "  poem" — to  dignify  it  with  that  title — 
ever  written  has  made  so  great  a  sensation  in  its  way 
or  in  so  short  a  time,  as  that.  I  don't  believe  there 
was  a  journal  in  the  United  States  at  that  time  of  its 
first  appearance,  literary,  religious,  or  scientific,  that 
did  not  copy  it.  It  was  repeated  by  everybody,  quoted 
by  everybody,  set  to  music,  translated  into  foreign  lan 
guages,  and  became  almost  a  classic.  It  did  more  to 
make  Bret  Harte  than  anything  else  that  was  ever 
written  by  him,  and  yet  he  thought  so  little  of  it 
himself  that  he  did  not  think  it  worth  putting  into 
print. 


CHAPTER  XV 

Authors  Club— Kipling— Tile  Club— Vedder— Henry  James- 
Mark  Twain  and  Cable— Mark  Twain's  Story  of  Mrs.  Stowe 
—Mark  Twain  and  Corbett— Stockton—  Stoddard— George 
William  Curtis— Thomas  B.  Reed— H.  C.  Bunner. 

WHEN  the  Authors  Club  was  in  its  comparative  in 
fancy,  a  select  little  party  of  its  members  found  them 
selves  in  its  rooms  in  West  23d  Street  one  night,  sitting 
about  a  fire  that  would  not  burn.  A  heavy  snow  was 
falling,  and  the  weather  was  bitterly  cold.  A  motion 
to  adjourn  to  a  neighbouring  hotel  was  carried  unani 
mously;  and  thither  we  went  in  pursuit  of  light  and 
warmth  and  spirituous  cheer.  The  great  bar-room 
was  crowded,  and  it  was  with  no  little  difficulty  that  we 
found  a  place  to  seat  ourselves.  At  last,  two  gentlemen 
at  a  table  in  a  far  corner  courteously  made  room  for  us. 
We  gathered  from  their  conversation  that  they  were 
strangers  in  New  York,  and  that  they  had  been  to  hear 
John  Fiske  lecture  on  the  "  Nebular  Hypothesis  "  that 
evening  at  the  Cooper  Institute.  Their  discourse  was 
so  intelligent  that  Mr.  Stedman  hazarded  a  few  remarks, 
saying  that  we  were  all  friends  of  the  lecturer;  and  the 
talk  became  general.  They  seemed  to  be  pleased  with 
us,  and  we  were  interested  in  them.  They  consented 

4" 


412  Galfcs  in  a  library 

to  take  a  parting  nip  with  us,  and  as  we  all  rose  to 
leave  the  room  Mr.  Stedman  ventured  to  tell  them  who 
we  were.  "  This  is  Mr.  Conant,"  he  said,  "of  Harper's 
Weekly.  This,  Mr.  Julian  Hawthorne.  This,  Mr. 
George  Parsons  Lathrop.  This,  Mr.  Richard  Grant 
White,  the  Shakespearian  author.  This,  Mr.  George 
Gary  Kggleston,  of  the  World.  This,  Professor  Boye- 
sen  of  Cornell.  This,  Mr.  Bunner,  viPuck.  This,  Mr. 
Laurence  Hutton,  the  historian  of  the  Stage;  and  I  am 
Mr.  B.  C.  Stedman."  The  strangers  looked  at  us  for 
a  moment  in  solemn  silence;  when  the  elder  of  them 
said — "  I  am  Bismarck,  and  my  friend  is  the  Pope  of 
Rome  !  "  And  without  a  word  of  "  good-night,"  or  a 
glance  behind  them,  they  hurried  out  into  the  storm. 

To  this  day,  no  doubt,  they  are  convinced  they  had 
fallen  into  the  nest  of  a  gang  of  bunco  steerers,  and 
they  are  still  congratulating  themselves  on  their  escape. 

A  group  of  short  story  writers  once  happened  to 
gather  in  the  Century  Club,  when  the  subject,  not  un 
naturally,  turned  upon  short  stories  ;  and  the  question 
was  raised  as  to  which  was  the  best  short  story  of 
modern  times.  Somebody  said,  "  Wait  a  bit;  let  us 
write  down  our  answers  without  discussion  or  collabo 
ration  ":  and  when  the  pads  upon  which  the  responses 
appeared  were  read,  it  was  discovered  that  the  six  best 
short  stories,  in  the  opinion  of  the.  experts,  were  six 
different  short  stories — all  of  them  written  by  Kipling  ! 
They  were  Wee  Willie  Winkie ;  Ba,  Ba,  Black  Sheep; 
Without  Benefit  of  Clergy  ;  The  Man  Who  Was;  The 


fltmtual  jfrienbs  413 

Man  Who  Would  be  King ;  and  The  Ship  that  Found 
Herself. 

Mr.  Gilder,  about  this  same  time,  gave  a  lunch  at 
the  old  University  Club  to  Kipling,  to  which  I  was  in 
vited.  Another  engagement  made  me  late  and  I  en 
tered  the  room  as  the  party  was  breaking  up.  I  was 
introduced  to  Mr.  Kipling,  with  whom  I  exchanged 
the  traditional  few  formal  words,  and  we  drifted  apart : 
but  a  moment  or  two  afterwards  he  placed  himself  on 
the  arm  of  the  chair  in  which  I  was  sitting  and  said: 

"  I  did  n't  realise,  Hutton  [not  Mr.  Hutton],  when 
I  met  you  a  moment  ago,  who  you  were.  Dear  old 
Wolcot  Balestier,  your  friend  and  mine,  tried  so  hard 
and  so  many  times  to  bring  us  together  in  L,ondon  and 
elsewhere,  and  now  he  is  gone,  and  I  can't  understand 
it  at  all.  He  died  so  suddenly  and  so  far  away;  we 
had  so  much  to  say  to  each  other,  and  now  I  have  got 
to  wait  so  long  before  I  can  say  it." 

This  was  not  meant  for  the  world;  but  for  one  listener. 
After  patting  me  on  the  shoulder  as  if  he  had  known 
me  twenty  years,  he  went  to  the  window  and  looked 
out  on  Madison  Square,  saying  nothing,  as  I  afterwards 
noticed,  for  several  minutes. 

When  Kipling  lay  a-dying,  as  we  all  supposed,  in 
New  York  a  year  or  two  later,  and  finally  recovered,  I 
wrote  to  him : 

"I  am  so  glad,  Dear  Man,  that  you  did  not  go  to 
have  that  talk  with  Wolcot,  for  he  can  afford  to  wait 
better  than  we  can." 


4  H  ZTalhs  in  a  Xibrar? 

The  famous  Tile  Club  of  New  York  used  to  have  its 
meetings  in  a  queer  old  place  in  the  rear  of  West 
loth  Street,  opposite  the  Studio  Buildings.  The  men, 
all  of  them  artists,  met  irregularly  in  a  simple  way  to 
exchange  ideas.  All  the  bright  young  sculptors  and 
painters,  in  colour  and  in  black  and  white,  were  mem 
bers  of  the  then  simple  little  association.  One  man  was 
the  host  of  each  evening.  Each  man  on  every  night 
did  something  in  his  own  line.  The  results  of  the 
work,  all  of  it  educational  and  improving,  went  to  the 
host  of  the  occasion.  O' Donovan  once  selected  Abbey 
as  the  subject  of  a  bas-relief  which  afterwards  came 
into  my  possession,  and  which  seems  to  me  to  be  worth 
preserving. 

The  Tile  Club  entertained,  naturally,  all  of  the  dis 
tinguished  strangers  of  the  kindred  professions  who 
came  to  this  country. 

One  night  there  chanced  to  be  sitting  on  a  settle  in  a 
corner  three  of  us,  Stanford  White,  Arthur  B.  Frost, 
and  myself,  waiting  for  dinner — always  a  simple  one — 
to  be  announced  ;  when  there  entered  an  old  friend  of 
two  of  us  but  a  total  stranger  to  the  third.  Placed  in 
a  row,  and  with  red  moustaches,  we  three  looked  not 
unlike;  and  the  stranger,  curiously  enough,  looked  like 
all  three  of  us.  He  stood  in  front  of  us,  gazed  upon 
the  group,  examined  White  carefully  and  me  carefully, 
and  then  gazed  in  a  most  inquiring  afid  interested  way 
at  the  man  he  had  never  seen  before.  He  looked  again 
at  White,  and  again  at  me,  and  at  the  other  man. 


THE  TILE  CLUB   PORTRAIT  OF   EDWIN   ABBEY 


ftbe  Cbimpansees  415 

Then  he  walked  to  a  little  mirror  in  the  corner  and 
looked  at  himself ;  and  he  came  back  and  gazed  at  me 
and  White  once  more,  and  he  said  to  the  inoffensive, 
silent,  wondering  replica  of  all  of  us  : 

"  For  the  Lord's  sake,  here  's  another  chimpanzee! " 

Frost,  astounded,  gasped  out: 

"Who  is  it?" 

"  Arthur,"  I  said,  "  it  's  Vedder.  Don't  you  know 
Vedder?" 

And  without  other  introduction  the  two  chimpanzees 
threw  themselves  into  each  other's  arms ;  perfectly 
familiar  with  each  other's  works  and  admiring  them, 
but  up  to  that  time  absolutely  unknown  to  each  other 
in  a  personal  way. 

During  the  early  days  of  the  American  Copyright 
League  a  meeting  was  held  in  my  library  in  Thirty- 
fourth  Street.  Many  of  the  men  most  prominent  in 
the  movement  were  present.  Mr.  Richard  Grant 
White  presided,  the  minutes  of  the  previous  meeting 
were  read  and  approved,  and  unfinished  business  was 
in  order.  Various  suggestions  were  being  made  when 
a  guest,  sitting  in  a  corner  of  the  room  by  the  window, 
suddenly  arose  and  addressed  the  assembled  authors. 
He  had  attracted  very  little  attention,  and  it  was  only 
noticed  that  he  had  been  absorbed  apparently  in  a  book 
on  his  lap.  The  Chairman,  not  recognising  him,  turned 
to  me  in  an  inquiring  way,  and  I  whispered: 

"  Mr.  Henry  James." 

Every  head  was  turned  in  his  direction,  surprise  was 


4i 6  ftalfes  in  a  Xibran? 

on  every  face,  and  the  scene  was  as  effective  as  is  that 
in  Bulwer's  play  Money,  when  the  entire  dramatis  per- 
sonce  push  back  their  chairs  to  gaze  upon  Alfred  Bvelyn 
as  the  unexpected  heir  of  the  will. 

For  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  the  speaker,  known  to- 
every  man  present  by  his  work,  unknown  in  a  personal 
way  to  most  of  his  hearers,  talked  of  things  apropos 
of  the  matter  in  hand,  in  a  manner  absolutely  to  the 
point  and  carrying  much  weight.  He  made  as  great 
an  impression  as  a  speaker  as  he  had  ever  made 
as  a  writer;  and  for  the  first  time,  after  a  long  residence 
abroad,  he  was  brought  into  intimate  contact  with  the 
men  of  his  own  guild  in  his  own  country. 

A  party  of  Boston  and  New  York  men  once  met  by 
appointment  in  Hartford  as  guests  of  Mark  Twain  on 
the  occasion  of  Mr.  George  W.  Cable's  first  appearance 
as  a  public  reader.  We  had  an  early  dinner  and  we 
occupied  in  a  body  seats  on  the  platform,  where  we  were 
arranged  behind  the  speaker's  desk,  and,  to  the  tre 
mendous  self-consciousness  of  some  of  us,  in  a  row  of 
chairs  like  a  group  of  negro  minstrels.  Mr.  Clemens 
had  to  introduce  the  speaker  to  his  audience  and  thus, 
so  far  as  I  can  remember,  he  did  it.  He  said: 

"  A  complete  stranger  myself  to  Mr.  Cable  person 
ally,  though  a  great  admirer  of  his  books,  I  appear 
before  you  as  his  sponsor  to-night,  if  he  needs  one. 
The  original  idea  was  that  Mr.  William  Dean  Howells 
of  New  York  was  to  introduce  Mr.  Cable  of  New 
Orleans  to  the  Hartford  audience,  when  it  occurred  to 


a  flDarfc  {Twain  IDersion        417 

the  Committee  that  Mr.  Howells  was  himself  a  stranger 
to  Hartford  and  did  not  know  Hartford,  nor  did  Hart 
ford  know  him.  So  Mr.  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich,  of 
Boston,  was  brought  from  Boston  to  introduce  Mr. 
Howells  of  New  York,  who  was  to  introduce  Mr.  Cable 
of  New  Orleans.  But  some  one  was  necessary  to  intro 
duce  Mr.  Aldrich  of  Boston,  so  Mr.  Gilder  of  New  York 
was  asked  to  introduce  Mr.  Aldrich  of  Boston,  who  was 
to  introduce  Mr.  Howells  of  New  York,  who  was  to 
introduce  Mr.  Cable  of  New  Orleans.  Then  the  same 
objection  arose.  No  one  knew  Mr.  Gilder  of  New 
York,  so  Mr.  John  Boyle  O'Reilly  of  Boston  was  asked 
to  introduce  Mr.  Gilder  of  New  York  who  was  to  intro 
duce  Mr.  Aldrich  of  Boston,  who  was  to  introduce  Mr. 
Howells  of  New  York,  who  was  to  introduce  Mr.  Cable 
of  New  Orleans. 

"  Once  more  an  awful  problem  arose  in  the  minds  of 
the  committee.  Mr.  John  B.  O'Reilly,  of  Boston,  had 
never  been  in  Hartford  before,  and  only  knew  it  as  a 
place  of  five  minutes  for  refreshments  on  the  New 
Haven  Railroad.  The  question  once  more  arose,  who 
would  introduce  Mr.  O'Reilly  of  Boston?  And  for  a 
time  no  proper  person  appeared  on  the  horizon.  After 
some  deliberation — for  the  matter  was  getting  serious — 
we  decided  to  dispense  with  an  introduction  altogether 
which  would  occupy  another  evening  at  least,  and 
to  let  Cable  speak  for  himself.  I  have,  however, 
here  present  on  the  platform  all  these  distinguished 

gentlemen    from   our  suburban  cities,   which  will  ac- 
27 


4i 8  {Talks  in  a  library 

count  for  the  menagerie  behind  nie.  And  this,  ladies 
and  gentlemen  of  Hartford,  is  Mr.  Cable  of  New 
Orleans." 

Mark  Twain  is  very  fond  of  telling  stories  about  his 
children.  One  day  little  Elsie  Leslie  was  dining  with 
the  Clemenses  at  Hartford,  and  there  were  present 
several  grown  people,  with  whom  she  talked  in  a  per 
fectly  easy  way.  Jean  Clemens,  then  very  young  in 
years,  was  surprised  to  see  a  child  so  self-possessed  in 
the  presence  of  strangers,  and  of  her  elders,  and  was 
annoyed  that  she  herself  could  not  converse  as  well,  and 
as  much,  as  her  visitor;  but  there  seemed  to  be  no  sub 
ject  introduced  on  which  she  had  any  knowledge.  At 
last  her  chance  came.  Some  mention  of  Tom  Sawyer 
was  made,  and  Jean  piped  up : 

"  I  know  who  wrote  that  book  ;  it  was  Mrs.  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe  !  " 

Such,  again,  is  fame  ! 

Mrs.  Stowe,  a  near  neighbour  of  theirs  at  Hartford, 
was  allowed,  in  her  feeble  old  age,  to  go  into  the 
Clemenses'  green-house  and  help  herself  to  flowers, — 
often  to  the  disgust  of  the  gardener,  as  she  carelessly 
pulled  up  bushes  by  the  roots  while  picking  the  roses. 
However,  Mrs.  Clemens  gave  directions  that  she  was  to 
do  as  she  pleased. 

A  new  and  very  taciturn  gardener  was  working  on 
the  place  one  day  when  Mrs.  Stowe  came  in.  She  saw 
that  his  face  was  unfamiliar,  and  saw  that  his  manner 
was  unpromising;  so  she  set  herself  to  conciliate  him, 


Congratulation  419 


and  to  give  him  a  hint  as  to  who  she  was,  by  asking  if 
he  had  ever  read  Uncle  Tom'  s  Cabin. 

"  Tried  to!  "  said  the  man. 

And  there  the  matter  rested. 

Among  the  very  kind  and  touching  letters  we  re 
ceived,  when  our  engagement  was  announced  in  1884, 
was  the  following: 

"HARTFORD,  December  22,  1884. 
"  MY  DEAR  HUTTON: 

"  I  must  not  venture  to  write  to  Miss  Mitchell,  so  I 
want  to  ask  you  to  be  my  messenger  to  her  and  con 
gratulate  her  upon  the  good  fortune  which  God  has 
bestowed  upon  her  and  which  she  without  any  doubt 
comes  as  near  deserving  as  anybody  could.  /  think 
she  has  done  exceedingly  well,  and  I  rejoice  with  her 
beyond  the  power  of  words  to  express. 

"And  now  I  am  relieved  of  a  burden  which  has  long 
been  secretly  oppressing  my  heart.  Months  ago,  fully 
aware  of  the  relations  existing  between  you  and  my 
daughter  [Jean,  then  aged  three  or  four],  I  was  shocked 
and  grieved  to  discover  that  she  had  transferred  her 
affections  to  a  kitten.  I  would  have  written  you  and 
exposed  her  treason,  but  I  could  not  break  your  heart; 
and  so  I  lingered,  hoping  that  you  or  the  kitten  would 
die,  and  so  disburden  me  of  my  shame  and  sorrow.  I 
tried  to  think  of  other  ways  out,  but  none  occurred  to 
me.  Yet  Providence  takes  the  thing  in  hand,  and  lo! 
by  a  simple  turn  of  the  Supreme  wrist,  everything  is 
lovely  and  the  goose  hangs  high.  How  wonderful  are 


420  Galfes  in  a  library 

the  ways  of  Providence,  when  yon  come  to  look  at  it. 
Good-bye.  We  all  send  our  very  warmest  congratula 
tions. 

"  Sincerely  yours, 

"S.  L.  CLEMENS." 

He  was  once  granted  a  special  interview  in  the 
Madison  Square  Garden  at  a  benefit  given  to  the  fully 
trained  prize-fighter,  Mr.  Corbett,  just  before  a  great 
battle  for  the  championship  belt.  Great  was  the  con 
trast  between  the  two  men  as  they  stood  face  to  face, 
the  one  in  evening  dress,  and  the  other  in  the  costume 
of  the  ring;  the  one  elderly  and  not  particularly  robust 
in  a  physical  way,  the  other  as  magnificent  a  specimen 
of  the  purely  animal  man  as  could  well  be  seen. 
Clemens,  in  his  drawling  manner,  said,  as  he  shook 
hands  with  his  vis-a-vis  : 

"  Well,  Mr.  Corbett,  you  look  as  if  you  could  do  it, 
and  for  your  sake  I  hope  you  may.  But  I  want  you  to 
understand  that  if  you  come  out  the  victor,  I  shall 
challenge  you  myself,  and  you  will  have  to  stand  up 
with  bare  knuckles  in  front  of  me  !  " 

Corbett  replied,  very  quickly: 

"  That,  Mr.  Clemens,  is  an  entirely  unfair  proposi 
tion,  because  if  I  lick  you — which  is  not  impossible — 
I  '11  be  only  the  champion  of  America,  but  if  you  lick 
me,  you  '11  be  not  merely  the  champion  of  America  but 
Mark  Twain  too;  and  the  odds  are  too  great  against 
me!" 


3frienM\>  Htbletics  421 

As  we  stepped  out  of  the  training-tent  to  take  seats 
in  the  arena,  Clemens  said: 

"  There  is  one  thing  about  that  man:  he  will  fight 
with  his  head." 

A  letter  he  once  wrote  to  us  is  as  follows: 

"  December  29,  Midnight. 

"  DKAR  MRS.  HUTTON: 

"  Thank  you  ever  so  much  for  the  invitation.  If  I 
live  I  '11  be  there;  —  otherwise  —  but  that  is  further 

alonS-  "S.  I,. 


There  had  been  in  the  early  days  at  John  Wood's 
gymnasium  a  silent,  homely,  quiet  little  man  taking 
his  nightly  exercise,  who  appealed  to  me  because  of 
the  dry  humour  of  his  occasional  remarks.  We  were 
both  rather  strong  in  the  arms  while  rather  weak  in  the 
rest  of  our  anatomy  and  we  could  do  together  the  same 
gymnastic  stunts,  between  which  we  would  sit  on  the 
mattresses  or  a  spring-board,  and  talk  about  all  sorts 
of  things;  I  giving  my  immature  impressions,  and  he 
expressing  himself  in  his  terse,  snappy,  unforgetable 
way.  We  drifted  apart,  not  knowing  each  other's 
names,  and  only  seeing  each  other  occasionally  at  the 
time  in  the  Institution  of  Physical  Culture,  as  its  pro 
prietor  called  it. 

Years  afterwards,  when  I  had  read  and  enjoyed 
Rudder  Grange,  and  The  Lady  or  the  Tiger,  I  met  one 
night  at  Mrs.  Mary  Mapes  Dodge's,  the  author  of 
those  delightful  tales.  He  was  introduced  to  me  as 


422  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

Mr.  Frank  Stockton  ;  he  remembered  me,  and  I  re 
membered  him  at  once  as  the  quiet  little  man  with 
whom  I  had  swung  Indian  clubs  and  put  up  weighted 
dumb-bells  twenty  or  more  years  before. 

In  those  early  days  he  was  associate  editor  of 
Hearth  and  Home,  and  absolutely  unknown  to  fame. 
How  he  has  made  himself  famous,  all  the  world  knows. 
Mrs.  Hutton  in  her  journal  tells  the  story  of  her  own 
first  meeting  with  the  Stocktons : 

' '  Frank  Stockton  and  his  wife  dined  with  us.  They 
are  nice  people;  so  gentle  and  unassuming.  They 
took  a  house  at  Dunster  for  six  weeks,  then  went  to 
Broadway,  in  England,  which  was  a  great  come-down 
after  the  land  of  the  '  Boon.'  Mr.  Stockton  told  a 
funny  darky  story  of  an  old  negress  who  said  she  had 
one  foot  in  the  grave,  while  the  other  was  shouting 
'  Glory  Hallelujah  ! '  He  said,  apropos  of  Mrs.  Mary 
Mapes  Dodge,  that  her  personal  physician  called  on  her 
once,  when  she  sent  him  word  she  *  was  too  ill  to  see 
him.'  I  repeated  her  remark  to  me  at  Onteora,  that 
1  Champagne  was  a  bottled  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  it 
made  every  one  blessed,'  which  he  thought  extremely 
happy." 

Frank  Stockton  was  once  invited  by  a  lady,  who 
called  herself  a  society  lady,  to  a  most  elaborate 
luncheon.  He  discovered  that  he  was  the  only  person 
of  his  own  sex  at  the  table,  and  he  realised  to  his  own 
modest  regret  that  he  was  the  hero  of  the  occasion. 
Everything  went  off  very  well  and  to  everybody's 


Stobbarfc  Dinner  423 


satisfaction,  until  the  end  of  the  symposium,  when 
there  was  presented  to  him,  first,  a  dish  of  ice-cream  in 
the  moulded  form  of  a  lady  and  a  tiger.  He  quickly 
realised  that  this  was  a  test  case;  that  his  hostess  and 
her  friends  meant  him  to  establish  the  fact  as  to  whether 
it  was  the  tiger  or  the  lady;  and  to  his  own  subsequent 
great  satisfaction,  he  had  presence  of  mind  enough  to 
say  that  he  did  not  eat  ices;  and  so  the  momentous 
question  was  never  settled. 

Richard  Henry  Stoddard  was  very  much  my  senior 
in  years;  nevertheless,  I  saw  not  a  little  of  him  in  the 
Century  Club  as  well  as  in  my  own  house  and  in  his. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  life,  when  his  eyes  began  to  fail 
him,  I  was  able  to  act  sometimes,  in  a  sort  of  irregular, 
informal  way,  as  his  amanuensis.  Although  he  had 
very  little  schooling  and  no  college  education,  I  was 
always  singularly  impressed  with  his  strength  and 
simplicity  of  diction,  and  with  the  unusual  extent  of 
his  vocabulary.  He  spoke  sometimes  for  hours  almost 
in  monosyllables,  never  failing  to  put  the  short  right 
word  in  its  proper  place,  and  where  it  had  the  most 
effect.  One  night  he  wrote  for  me,  in  his  old,  feeble 
handwriting,  twelve  lines  which  he  called  a  catch,  in 
which  he  had  only  two  words  of  more  than  one  syllable 
and  those  were  pure  Anglo-Saxon.  This  was  at  the 
Century  Club,  December  7,  1888. 

A  dinner  was  given  to  him  by  the  Authors'  Club  in 
New  York  in  1897,  at  which  were  present  all  the  distin 
guished  men  of  letters  that  could  be  gathered  together. 


424  Galhs  in  a  library 

It  was  a  great  event.  He  spoke  very  beautifully  and 
very  suitably,  himself ;  and  at  the  end  of  the  dinner, 
when  everything  that  could  be  said  about  him  had  been 
said  by  his  many  friends,  and  in  the  most  charming 
way,  I  found  myself  called  upon  to  reply  to  the  toast 
of  Mrs.  Stoddard  and  Mr.  lyorimer  Stoddard,  their  son. 
I  was  entirely  unprepared,  and  nothing  was  left  me  to 
add  to  the  previous  remarks;  happily  I  was  inspired, 
in  speaking  of  Mr.  Lorimer  Stoddard,  whom  I  had 
known  since  boyhood,  to  say  that  perhaps  the  boy  who 
had  just  made  a  success  as  a  playwright  and  an  actor 
was,  after  all,  the  very  best  bit  of  work  which  Mr. 
Stoddard  had  given  to  the  world;  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  his  must  be  a  happy  lot.  Other  men  are  proud  of 
the  fact  that  they  are  their  father's  sons,  but  Lorimer 
had  done  things  which  made  his  father  proud  of  him. 
This  touched  the  old  man  greatly,  and  when  at  the 
close  of  the  symposium  I  went  up  to  speak  with  Mrs. 
Stoddard — who  with  a  number  of  ladies  was  sitting  in 
the  gallery  of  the  hall — she  said  nothing,  but  kissed 
my  cheek,  and  that  was  reward  enough.  I  prompted 
the  old  man  in  his" speech,  and  sat  behind  him.  At 
the  close  of  it  he  was  overcome  with  exhaustion,  and 
almost  fell  into  my  arms. 

A  propos  of  Stoddard  and  his  lack  of  schooling  and 
early  education,  I  have  been  struck  with  the  fact  that 
a  great  number  of  American  writers,  early  and  late,  of 
more  or  less  distinction,  have  received  no  college  train 
ing.  Poe  spent  but  one  session  at  the  University  of 


UajCJL 


5  T; 


4  c~~ 


-C 


?£ 

*"       yfX^x*. 


A  LETTER   FROM  R.  H.  STODDARD 


(Beorge  TWUHiam  Curtis         425 

Virginia,  and  he  was  expelled  by  court-martial  from 
West  Point  at  the  end  of  six  months.  Bryant  was  only 
one  year  at  Williams;  Stedman  left  Yale  in  his  Sopho 
more  year ;  Cooper  left  Yale  as  a  Junior  ;  William 
Winter's  university  career  was  confined  to  the  Harvard 
Law  School ;  while  Mark  Twain,  Howells,  Aldrich, 
Stockton,  George  W.  Cable,  R.  Watson  Gilder,  Walt 
Whitman,  Whitcomb  Riley,  Bunner,  Hopkinson  Smith, 
Charles  Henry  Webb  (John  Paul),  Bret  Harte,  Joaquin 
Miller,  Thomas  Russell  Sullivan,  Artemus  Ward,  Ed 
ward  Eggleston,  Hamilton  Gibson,  John  Burroughs, 
Harold  Frederick,  Howard  Pyle,  Thomas  Janvier, 
James  Parton,  Buchanan  Read,  E.  I*.  Youmans,  Bron- 
son  Alcott,  Charles  Brockton  Brown,  Horace  Greeley, 
Fitz-Green  Halleck,  Thomas  Paine,  Audubon,  Rod 
man  Drake,  Bayard  Taylor,  John  G.  Whittier,  John 
Howard  Payne,  George  William  Curtis,  and  Washing 
ton  Irving,  never  went  to  college  at  all! 

Of  George  William  Curtis,  in  the  later  years  of  his 
life,  I  saw  something,  but  not  much — not  nearly  so 
much  as  I  would  have  liked.  I  had  read  his  earlier 
works  in  my  boyhood  as  they  first  appeared,  and  I  had 
inherited  from  my  father,  from  whom  I  also  inherited 
my  love  of  Trumps  and  Prue  and  /,  a  very  complete 
collection  of  the  first  editions  of  Curtis' s  books.  This 
pleased  and  touched  him,  because,  he  said,  he  ques 
tioned  very  much  if  he  possessed  them  himself.  He 
made  me  very  happy  by  writing  on  the  fly-leaf  of  his 
Washington  Irving  a  line  of  presentation  in  which  he 


426  ftalfcs  in  a  Xibrar? 

called  me  his  "confrere  "/  and  he  pleased  me  almost  as 
much  once  in  print,  when  he  said  of  some  unimportant 
little  essay  of  mine  that  he  had  discovered  in  it  a 
touch  of  the  manner  and  the  sentiment  of  Charles 
L,amb.  But  unwittingly,  one  night,  he  was  the  cause 
to  me  of  deep  embarrassment  and  distress.  The  Har 
pers  had  given  a  farewell  dinner  to  Mr.  Charles  Par 
sons,  for  so  many  years  the  conductor  of  their  Art 
Department,  at  which  were  present  the  heads  of  the 
house,  the  editors  of  the  periodicals,  many  contributors, 
and  all  the  regular  members  of  the  editorial  staff. 
Everybody  had  something  to  say  in  praise  of  Mr. 
Parsons,  whom  we  all  respected  and  revered.  I  was 
notified  that  I  would  be  called  upon  to  make  a  little 
speech;  and  I  had  prepared  myself  with  great  care,  re 
volving  certain  little  compliments  in  my  mind. 

After  the  coffee  came  the  talk,  more  or  less  formal. 
Mr.  Harper  spoke,  Mr.  Parsons  replied.  Mr.  Charles 
Dudley  Warner  made  a  charming  speech,  and  Mr. 
George  William  Curtis  in  direct  succession  came  after 
him,  saying  things  most  beautiful,  most  kindly,  most 
affectionate,  most  true,  as  no  man  but  Mr.  Curtis — the 
prince  of  orators — could  have  said  them.  And  then, 
to  my  horror,  was  my  own  turn.  I  felt  absolutely 
crushed.  Everything  I  had  thought  of  had  gone  from 
my  mind  and  memory.  I  was,  in  a  minute,  to  follow 
Mr.  Curtis,  and  I  had  nothing  to  say,  except  to  repeat 
what  I  had  had  no  thought  of  repeating,  that  once, 
when  asked  who  would  be  likely  to  take  Mr.  Curtis's 


A   NOTE   FROM    CHARLES    READE 


INSCRIPTION  IN  BOOK  FROM  GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS 


H  S)ed6ion  427 


place  in  the  "  Easy  Chair,"  I  had  replied,  that  "plenty 
of  men  might  succeed  him  but  that  nobody  could  take 
his  place." 

That  night  we  walked  up  Fifth  Avenue  together 
from  Delmonico's  to  the  house  of  the  friend  in  the  upper 
part  of  the  town  with  whom  he  was  stopping.  Mr. 
Curtis  then  told  me  a  pretty  little  story  I  had  never 
heard  and  which  I  have  never  heard  since.  Perhaps  it 
is  unwritten  history. 

Many  years  before,  and  after  he  had  been  with  the 
Harpers  for  a  long  time,  he  received  in  midsummer  a 
letter  from  the  publisher  of  a  magazine  about  to  be 
started  in  a  distant  city,  offering  him — Mr.  Curtis — the 
position  of  editor-in-chief  at  a  salary  quite  double  that 
which  he  was  then  receiving.  He  showed  the  letter  to 
one  of  the  original  members  of  the  Harpers  firm  and  a 
founder  of  the  house,  with  the  remark  that  he  had  de 
cided  not  to  accept  the  offer,  but  that  he  felt  that  Mr. 
Harper  ought  to  know  that  the  offer  had  been  made. 

Mr.  Harper  replied  to  this  effect : 

"  Don't  decide  rashly,  George.  This  is  a  great  com 
pliment  to  you,  and  a  very  serious  matter.  Take  the 
letter  home  with  you  and  sleep  over  it  for  a  night  or 
two,  and  talk  it  over  with  Mrs.  Curtis.  We  don't  want 
you  to  go,  but  we  can't  afford  to  keep  you  for  the 
handsome  sum  which  these  men  are  able  to  offer. 
Think  it  over  carefully,  and  let  me  know  your  decision 
on  Monday  morning." 

On  the  Monday  morning  Mr.  Curtis  laid  upon  Mr, 


428  Galfts  in  a  %ibrar\> 

Harper's  desk  the  unsealed  letter  containing  his  definite 
reply, — a  polite  refusal.  Mr.  Harper  said  : 

"  Is  this  final,  George?" 

"  It  is  final.  I  have  been  with  you  a  long  time,  I 
have  been  very  happy  here,  I  feel  that  I  belong  here, 
you  have  been  very  good  to  me,  and  I  cannot  go." 

Mr.  Harper  said  nothing,  sealed  the  letter,  stamped 
it,  and  gave  it  to  a  messenger  to  post.  Mr.  Curtis 
started  to  go  up  to  the  editorial  room,  when  Mr. 
Harper  overtook  him,  led  him  up  to  the  cashier's 
desk,  and  said: 

11  Dating  from  the  ist  of  January  last,  Mr.  Curtis' s 
salary  is  to  be  increased  an  hundred  per  cent." 

And  Mr.  Curtis' s  voice  broke  a  little  as  he  told  me 
the  tale. 

Mr.  Thomas  B.  Reed  I  had  met  occasionally,  and 
casually,  before  we  were  thrown  together  for  a  month 
or  six  weeks  during  a  cruise  to  the  West  Indies  in  the 
Kanawah,  the  steam  yacht  of  Mr.  Henry  H.  Rogers. 
The  party  was  a  small  one,  including  Mark  Twain,  Dr. 
Clarence  Rice,  Mr.  Augustus  Payne,  Mr.  Wallace 
Foote,  and  of  course  Mr.  Rogers  himself. 

Naturally,  in  our  cramped  but  luxurious  quarters,  we 
were  drawn  very  closely  together,  and  upon  Mr.  Reed 
was  enforced  an  intimacy  with  all  of  us  which  he  could 
not  have  avoided  if  he  had  wished,  and  which  to  me 
was  most  agreeable.  He  asked  me  one  day  how  far 
Theodore  Parker — a  man  for  whom  he  had  great  ad 
miration — was  known  and  read,  if  known  and  read  at 


a  Ibolfoap  Cruise  429 

all,  among  the  graduates  of  the  University  with  which 
I  was  connected;  and  then  he  spoke  of  the  ephemeral 
reputation  of  the  great  men  who  are  great  only  during 
their  own  short  lives,  and  in  the  minds  of  the  few  who 
really  appreciate  their  greatness.  He  said  that  Parker' s 
writings  must  have  been  familiar  to  Lincoln,  as  the 
famous  Gettysburg  Address  clearly  proved.  And  then 
he  quoted,  with  his  wonderful  memory,  a  speech  of 
Parker's  delivered  at  an  anti-slavery  convention  in 
Boston  ten  or  twelve  years  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
Civil  War,  in  which  the  clergyman  said  that  ours  * '  is  a 
Government  of  all  the  people,  by  all  the  people,  for  all 
the  people.  A  Government  on  the  principles  of  eternal 
Justice,  the  unchanging  law  of  God,  for  shortness'  sake 
I  will  call  it  the  idea  of  Freedom." 

Reed  thought  that  this  suggested  to  Lincoln  the 
great  sentence  with  which  his  name  will  ever  be  asso 
ciated:  "  A  Government  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
for  the  people,  shall  not  perish  from  the  earth."  And 
he  added  that  perhaps  Parker  himself  based  his  own 
thrilling  statement  upon  a  speech  made  by  Daniel 
Webster  when  Parker  could  not  have  been  more  than 
twenty  years  old,  to  the  effect  that  "  the  people's  Gov 
ernment  is  made  for  the  people,  made  by  the  people, 
and  is  answerable  to  the  people."  His  dates  and  his 
quotations  were  all  from  memory  and  spontaneously 
uttered  in  the  course  of  unpremeditated  conversation, 
and  they  all  seem  to  have  been  correct. 

Returning  abruptly  to  Parker  he  said,  in  his  epi- 


430  Galfca  in  a  Xibran? 

grammatic  way  and  with  the  familiar  twinkle  in  his 
eye,  that  Parker  to  his  mind  was  '  *  of  indubitable 
courage  and  originality,  because  he  was  almost  the  first 
man  who  attempted  to  raise  hell  with  Hell,  in  public  !  " 

Later,  writing  home  from  Jamaica  Bay,  I  said  : 

"  Since  we  shipped  some  Jamaica  rum  on  board,  of 
very  fine  and  ancient  quality,  the  ex- Speaker  has  made 
us  occasional  punches  in  the  concoction  of  which  he  is 
said  to  be  famous,  and  of  the  nature  of  which  he  is  ex 
tremely  proud.  The  results  are  good  and  not  harmful, 
but  the  great  charm  of  it  all  lies  in  watching  the  face 
of  the  manufacturer  during  the  operation.  He  looks 
very  much  as  Pickwick  must  have  looked  under  similar 
circumstances.  In  appearance  he  is  a  sort  of  cross  be 
tween  Pickwick  and  Ben  Butler,  although  unlike  either 
of  them  in  character  and  in  disposition,  except  that  he 
has  some  of  the  simplicity  of  the  one  and  all  the  acute- 
ness  and  originality  of  the  other." 

Still  later,  I  spoke  of  a  wet  day  upon  one  of  the  little 
islands,  and  of  the  spectacle  of  Pick  wick- Reed  in  a  very 
bright  yellow  so' wester  cap  and  gown,  suggesting  the 
advertisements  of  Scott's  Emulsion,  to  which  naturally, 
with  a  good  deal  of  laughter,  his  attention  was  called. 
He  himself  thought  that  it  was  all  very  funny  until  the 
sun  came  out — hot! 

To  any  sort  of  personal  display  "  Mr.  Speaker" — as 
we  called  him — was  particularly  averse.  On  the  occa 
sion  of  the  inauguration  of  Professor  Wilson  as  Presi 
dent  of  the  University  of  Princeton,  Mr.  Reed  was  one 


G.  B,  IRee&'s  OLast  letter       431 

of  the  guests  of  the  institution.  He  marched  calmly 
and  majestically  with  the  other  dignitaries  of  the 
nation  in  the  procession,  capped  and  gowned,  but  re 
fusing  utterly  to  wear  the  bright-coloured  hood  to 
which  he  was  entitled,  on  the  ground  that  it  would 
make  him  look  like  a  Knight  of  Pythias  ! 

With  Mark  Twain,  Mr.  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman, 
and  Mr.  Samuel  Elliot,  he  was  our  personal  guest 
during  those  same  inauguration  performances,  remain 
ing  with  us  for  a  short  time,  and  going  from  us  almost 
directly  to  Washington,  to  die  in  a  few  days.  It  was, 
therefore,  the  last  visit  he  ever  made;  and  almost  the 
last  letter  he  ever  wrote  was  to  me,  thanking  Mrs. 
Hutton  for  the  care  she  had  taken  of  him: 

"  25  BROAD  STREET,  13  November,  1902. 
"  DEAR  MR.  HUTTON: 

"  I  heard  from  Mr.  Elliot  that  you  had  reformed  and 
become  a  man.  It  is  a  good  thing  to  try,  especially  if 
you  keep  it  up.  I  have  tried  the  beginnings  of  it  my 
self,  but  cannot  speak  as  one  having  authority  about 
the  prolongation  thereof;  keep  on,  and  tell  us  what 
you  think  of  it. 

' '  I  wish  I  could  express  the  pleasure  which  the  visit 
to  your  home  gave  me,  as  well  as  all  the  rest.  It  will 
always  be  a  delightful  memory  to  recall  the  way  in 
which  Mrs.  Hutton  personally  conducted  me  and 
moved  me  without  jostling  me  at  all,  in  this  direc 
tion  and  that. 


432  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

"  I  pride  myself  on  my  skill  in  finding  it  out,  for  no 
less  skilful  a.  man  than  myself  could  ever  have  known 
it.  Do  give  her  the  assurance  of  my  personal  regard 
and  good  wishes. 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  that  Mrs.  Clemens  is  on  the  road 
to  health  for  that  means  so  much  to  Mark. 
' '  With  best  wishes  for  yourself, 

' '  Truly  yours, 

"T.  B.  REKD." 

Just  before  that  memorable  yachting  party  broke  up, 
there  was  given  at  my  house  a  dinner  to  some  twelve 
or  fourteen  men.  There  were  present,  besides  the 
house-party,  Mr.  E.  C.  Benedict,  Mr.  Richard  Watson 
Gilder,  Mr.  J.  Henry  Harper,  Colonel  Harvey,  Mr. 
George  Armour,  Mr.  Allison  Armour,  Mr.  Cleveland, 
and  others.  The  Ex-President  and  the  Ex-Speaker  sat 
facing  each  other,  one  at  the  head  and  one  at  the  foot 
of  the  table;  and  as  Mr.  Gilder  afterwards  wrote:  "  It 
was  the  greatest  affair  at  which  I  ever  assisted.  It  was 
so  much  more  than  amusing;  it  was  so  deeply  instruc 
tive,  and  at  the  end  so  thrilling  and  so  ennobling.  It 
was  your  tact  and  right  feeling  that  made  the  climax, 
that  impromptu  outburst  of  Cleveland.  He  was  never 
more  himself,  never  more  afire  with  righteous  fury, 
never  more  wise  or  nobly  convincing.  Indeed,  the 
whole  occasion  was  a  great  treat :  I  may  say,  a  remark 
able  and  unique  event.  How  many  scores  of  dinners, 
public  or  private,  have  I  not  assisted  at:  yet  I  can 


politics  433 


think  of  none  of  its  kind  that  surpassed  it  in  substance 
or  that  equalled  it  quite." 

With  such  men  and  with  such  speakers,  perfectly 
free  to  express  themselves,  absolutely  sure  that  every 
thing  said  was  said  in  a  confidence  that  would  be  re 
spected — that  the  reporter  was  pre-eminently  absent, — 
the  dinner  could  not  help  being  a  "  remarkable  and 
unique  event." 

The  two  great  statesmen,  representing  everything 
that  was  good  in  the  two  great  rival  parties,  holding 
each  other  in  the  highest  regard  and  respect,  had 
never,  perhaps,  been  so  closely  together  for  so  many 
hours— for  we  were  at  the  table  from  eight  o'clock  till 
long  after  midnight, — and  it  was  a  little  startling  to 
some  of  the  onlookers,  listening  naturally  with  all 
their  ears,  to  see  how  nearly  alike  the  two  men 
spoke  and  thought  upon  all  great  public  and  moral 
questions. 

I  told  Mr.  Reed  more  than  once  during  that  famous 
voyage  of  ours  that  if  I  could  shut  my  eyes  and  my 
ears  to  the  material  differences  in  their  personal  appear 
ance,  and  in  their  utterance,  I  would  suppose  the  Presi 
dent  was  speaking  the  words  that  I  heard;  and  he  said 
to  me  just  as  the  voyage  was  coming  to  a  close,  after 
one  of  our 'long  talks; 

"What  are  your  politics,  anyway?  You  came  on 
board  this  boat  a  month  or  two  ago  and  avowed  your 
self,  openly  and  defiantly,  a  Democrat, — no  Mugwump, 
but  a  Democrat, — and  this  to  a  party  made  up  ex- 


434  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

clusively  of  Republicans.  What  are  your  politics, 
airway  ?  ' ' 

I  said: 

1 '  Mr.  Speaker,  since  I  have  been  with  you  and  have 
imbibed  your  views  and  impressions,  I  have  come  to  the 
conclusion  that  I  must  be  a  sort  of  Grover-Cleveland- 
Thomas-B.-Reed-demi-Republicrat." 

Henry  Bunner  was  a  man  I  would  have  nothing  to 
do  with  for  years.  It  was  a  case  of  reciprocal  Dr.  Fell. 
We  did  not  like  each  other,  and  we  neither  of  us  could 
tell  the  reason  why.  We  met  constantly  at  the  theatres 
— we  were  both  enthusiastic  "  First-nighters  " — but  we 
never  looked  at  each  other  if  we  could  help  it,  and,  of 
course,  we  never  spoke.  We  had  many  friends  and 
acquaintances  in  common,  and  very  often  we  escaped 
an  introduction  by  the  merest  chance,  or  by  the  most 
elaborate  mutual  avoidance.  He  always  thought  of 
me,  when  he  permitted  himself  to  think  of  me,  as 
"  Play-bill  Hutton,"  because  of  my  interest  in,  and  my 
collection  of,  theatre-programmes;  and  I  never  allowed 
myself  to  think  of  him  at  all.  The  reason  why  I  can 
not  imagine  now.  At  last,  one  night  we  were  thrown 
violently  at  each  other.  It  was  in  1878,  at  a  large  re 
ception.  I  knew  almost  nobody.  Bunner  knew  every 
body.  He  saw  my  situation,  which  was  trying — an 
outsider  among  a  large  party  of  intimates, — and  too 
loyal  to  his  hosts,  and  instinctively  too  much  of  a 
gentleman  to  see  a  man  neglected  in  that  house,  or  a 
stranger  in  any  house  wandering  about  forlorn  and 


Bobemian  Dinners  435 

alone,  he  came  up  and  asked  me  if  I  would  smoke 
a  cigarette  and  take  a  glass  of  sherry  in  the  dining- 
room.  I  replied,  promptly,  that  I  would — if  there 
were  no  cigars  and  no  whiskey!  And  from  that  mo 
ment  we  were  friends.  We  never  passed  each  other  by 
again. 

When  my  mother  died,  and  I  lived  alone  for  some 
years,  I  never  dined  alone  at  home.  James  O'Brien, 
at  one  time  steward  of  the  Arcadian  Club,  had  taken  a 
lease  of  the  restaurant  in  the  Westmoreland  Hotel,  on 
the  corner  of  Fourth  Avenue  and  Seventeenth  Street, 
in  New  York,  and  there,  when  I  had  no  other  engage 
ment,  I  took  my  evening  meal.  Bunner  began  to  drop 
in  now  and  then,  and  later  more  regularly.  Finally 
our  nightly  meeting  became  an  established  custom;  a 
large  round  table  in  the  bay-window  was  reserved  for 
us — always — and  one  of  us  was  very  sure  to  be  found 
at  it;  usually  both  of  us.  When  this  fact  became  gen 
erally  known,  many  of  the  bright  young  journalists 
of  his  acquaintance  made  it  their  trysting-place  after 
dinner,  if  not  at  dinner;  and  good  was  the  talk  that 
round  table  heard.  Mr.  Brander  Matthews,  who  lived 
in  Eighteenth  Street,  not  far  away,  would  look  in  after 
his  (then  little)  daughter  had  gone  to  bed;  and  among 
the  men  we  saw  and  heard  there  were  Mr.  Clarence  C. 
Buel,  Mr.  John  Moran,  Mr.  James  L.  Ford,  Mr.  Edgar 
Fawcett,  Mr.  Henry  Gallup  Paine,  Mr.  Francis  Saltus, 
Mr.  Munkitrick,  Mr.  George  Edgar  Montgomery,  Mr. 
William  J.  Henderson,  Mr.  Ripley  Hitchcock,  Mr. 


436  Galfcs  In  a  Xibrarg 

Julian  Magnus,  Mr.  A.  K.  Watrous,  and  many  others 
who  have  since  made  good  names  for  themselves. 

All  this  came  to  an  end  for  me  when  I  married 
in  1885,  and  for  Bunner  when  he  married  shortly 
after. 

Bunner  and  I  went  often  together  to  the  theatres 
during  this  period;  we  were  members  together  of  the 
Authors  Club,  of  the  International  Copyright  League, 
of  The  Kinsmen;  and  in  common  we  had  many  tastes 
and  interests.  He  read  me  in  advance  all  the  poems 
afterward  collected  together  as  the  Airs  from  Arcady. 
We  talked  for  hours  over  Love  in  Old  Clothes,  the  best, 
perhaps,  of  his  tales,  and  a  little  bit  of  work  which  cost 
him  infinite  care,  and  thought,  and  labour.  He  was 
then  helping  to  establish  the  edition  of  Puck  in  English 
— now  a  power  in  the  land — and  working  hard  at  it. 
He  was  very  quick  of  insight,  and  remarkably  ready 
of  utterance  and  expression,  even  in  verse.  I  remem 
ber  stopping  one  day  into  the  Puck  office,  then  in  a 
cross  street  off  lower  Broadway,  to  lunch  with  him  by 
appointment.  As  we  were  going  out  of  the  editorial 
rooms  the  printer's  devil  entered  with  a  process-picture 
of  a  commonplace  young  woman,  to  illustrate  which 
Bunner  was  asked  to  contribute  a  "  stickful  "  of  text — 
and  at  once.  He  lighted  a  fresh  cigarette,  stepped  up 
to  somebody  else's  desk,  and,  more  rapidly  than  I  could 
have  copied  them  out,  set  down  sixteen  or  twenty 
rhythmical  lines  which  would  scan  and  would  parse, 
and  were  very  fair  <(  poetry  " — as  such  things  go.  He 


IDerse  b?  Banner  437 

did  not  sign  them;  and  he  said  lightly  that  that  was  an 
every-day  occurrence  and  of  no  moment. 

Bunner  was  equally  ready  with  his  occasional  poems 
of  dedication,  inscription,  or  the  like.  In  our  Guest- 
Book  he  transcribed  the  following  impromptu  lines: 

TO  LARRY  HUTTON 

You  may  write  it  LAURENCE,  all  you  please, 

Your  name  to  Fame  to  marry  ; 
But  you  're  only  whistling  down  the  breeze, 

For  folks  will  call  you  LARRY. 
And  if  the  reason  you  inquire, 

I  '11  tell  you  all  I  know  ; 
Why  is  Joseph  Jefferson,  Esquire, 

Called  Jo? 

You  may  spell  your  LAURENCE  with  a  u, 

Till  it 's  Scotch  as  a  green  glengarry, 
But  other  folks  are  naming  too  ; 

And  your  name  they  say  is  LARRY. 
And  if  you  're  curious  in  the  least 

To  know  what  that  comes  from  ; 
Why  was  T.  Bowling,  late  deceased, 

Called  TOM  ? 

H.  C.  BUNNER. 
October  19,  1893. 

He  and  Mr.  Telford  and  I  spent  together,  at  the 
Westmoreland  and  in  Bunner' s  rooms,  the  last  evening 
of  my  single  life.  He  had  heard  that  luck  would  be 
insured  if  the  groom,  on  the  occasion  of  his  marriage, 
would  wear  "something  old,  something  new,  some 
thing  borrowed,  and  something  blue,"  He  urged, 
therefore,  my  appearance  next  day  in  a  pair  of  socks 


438  ftalfcs  in  a  library 

procured  especially  by  him  for  me.  One  was  absolutely 
unworn,  the  other  had  seen  service  and  was  darned. 
But  they  were  both  blue.  And  I  must  borrow  them. 
Mr.  Telford,  I  remember,  loaned  me  a  necktie  for  the 
same  purpose;  and  both  of  those  dear  boys  were  mar 
ried,  when  their  time  came,  in  something  blue  that  was 
borrowed  from  me. 

Mrs.  Bunner  I  knew  as  Miss  Alice  Learned  long  be 
fore  she  was  his  wife.  Happy  was  the  day  for  him, 
and  happy  for  her,  when  she  became  Mrs.  Henry 
Bunner.  We  sent  to  her  at  New  London  a  travelling- 
clock  as  a  wedding  gift,  to  which  I  attached  a  card 
bearing  these  lines: 

For  Old  Times'  sake 

Will  you  and  H.  C.  B. 
At  this  time  take 

The  Time  from  mine  and  me  ? 

Time  is,  Time  was, 

Let  Time  be  old  or  new, 
The  Times  for  us 

Are  High  Old  Times  with  you." 

To  this,  in  similar  verse,  Miss  Learned  replied: 

I  lack  the  time,  in  spite  of  time  from  you, 
To  write  the  heartfelt  thanks  I  feel  are  due. 
But  every  passing  hour,  while  time  endures, 
Shall  speak  to  me  and  mine,  of  you  and  yours. 

And  he  and  his  and  I  and  mine  had  many  happy 
times  together  for  many  years.  There  never  was  a 


H  ]finn  Jrienbebip  439 

break,  or  the  shadow  of  a  break  in  our  friendship. 
He  was  very  strong  in  his  likes  and  in  his  dislikes — 
often  without  good  reason.  And  I  like  to  think  now 
that,  when  we  came  to  know  each  other,  he  always 
liked  me,  whatever  his  reason  may  have  been.  A 
more  disinterestedly  loyal  man  to  his  friends  I  never 
met,  nor  a  man  more  devotedly  attached  to  his  own 
family.  He  was  always  sympathetic,  always  ready  to 
help,  always  full  of  encouragement,  never  sparing  of 
his  words  of  praise  for  the  work  of  others.  His  laugh 
was  hearty  and  contagious,  and  how  quick  was  his  ap 
preciation  of  everything  that  was  good  all  the  world 
who  reads  can  tell.  He  was  an  excellent  listener,  and 
he  was  an  admirable  talker  upon  all  sorts  of  subjects, 
grave  and  gay.  He  had  an  unusual  knowledge  of 
books  and  of  their  contents,  particularly  of  the  works 
of  the  poets,  ancient  and  modern.  He  quoted  readily, 
correctly,  appropriately,  and  at  length;  and  if  one 
wanted  to  remember  a  line  or  a  sonnet  of  any  of  the 
half- forgotten  men  of  the  period  of  the  very  beginning 
of  English  verse,  Bunner  could  always  say  where  it 
was,  whose  it  was,  and  exactly  what  it  was,  and  why. 
As  in  the  case  of  many  of  the  brilliant  men  with 
whom  I  have  been  lucky  enough  to  have  come  into 
intimate  contact,  I  have,  unfortunately,  let  most  of 
Bunner' s  best  talk  fly  up  the  chimney.  I  dreaded  to 
appear  as  a  chiel  among  them  taking  notes,  and  the 
happy  thoughts,  the  flashes  of  wit,  the  bright  turns  of 
expression,  the  bits  of  epigram  and  of  wisdom  I  would 


440  £alhs  in  a  library 

now  give  much  to  have  preserved  went  out  into  the 
thin  air  long  ago,  and  melted  away. 

One  of  the  most  touching  and  pathetic  incidents  in 
his  career  is  the  story  of  his  Lost  Joke.  It  was  in  the 
old  days  of  our  Westmoreland  cafe  life,  when,  in  my 
absence,  Bunner  found  but  one  man  at  the  table — a 
fellow  of  a  peculiarly  clear  mind.  He  asked  Bunner 
some  simple  question,  as  "  Did  you  come  up-town  in 

the   Fourth   Avenue   or  Sixth   Avenue   Line?"     To 

i 
which  Bunner  replied  in  an  equally  commonplace  way. 

as,  "  No,  I  walked."  Bunner,  at  the  end  of  many 
years,  could  remember  neither  the  question  nor  the 
answer  nor  the  nature  of  them  ;  but  the  words  he 
uttered,  whatever  they  may  have  been,  were  received 
with  shouts  of  laughter.  Bunner  did  not  know  why, 
and  he  never  knew  why.  He  saw  nothing  funny  in 
them — at  that  time  or  later.  And  he  entirely  forgot 
what  they  were  and  what  prompted  them.  But  his 
interlocutor  pronounced  it  the  best  thing  that  Bunner 
had  ever  said,  and  he  laughed  over  it  until  he  wept, 
and  then  he  laughed  again.  It  was  to  him  the  acme 
of  humorous  expression.  He  was  too  diffident  to  re 
peat  it,  whatever  it  was,  because  he  thought  that 
Bunner  said  it  intentionally,  and  wanted  him  to  say  it 
in  his  turn,  and  so,  somehow,  commit  himself;  and  he 
never  told  it;  and  he  died;  and  Bunner  never  dis 
covered  the  joke  on  his  own  account.  He  was  very 
miserable  at  the  thought  that  his  most  sublime  effort 
of  wit  was  unrecognised  by  himself,  and  went  into  the 


Xoet  3ofce  441 


ear  of  the  only  man  who  ever  heard  it  and  who  ever 
appreciated  it,  and  was  there  kept  for  ever  from  Banner 
and  the  rest  of  the  world.  And  poor  Bunner  could  not 
even  think  what  it  was  about. 

It  is  a  subject  for  a  tragedy,  but  it  has  never  been 
written. 

We  had  "  high  old  times"  with  the  Bunners  some 
eight  or  nine  years  later  in  London.  It  was  their  first 
visit  to  the  Old  World;  and  I  had  much  pleasure  in 
taking  them  about  the  town  I  loved  so  well,  although 
my  own  pleasure,  I  am  afraid,  was  greater  than  his. 
He  had  developed  symptoms  of  a  rabid  Anglophobic 
nature,  and  the  present-day  Englishman  seemed  to  be 
stepping  upon  every  sensitive  nerve  in  his  system.  He 
had  succeeded  in  fretting  all  the  skin  off  his  mental 
body,  and  he  was  never  so  happy  as  when  he  could 
taunt  some  Englishman  into  rubbing  salt  into  his 
wounds.  He  left  St.  Paul's  Cathedral  in  disgust  be 
cause  upon  the  monument  to  Cornwallis  there  was 
every  allusion  to  that  person's  worth,  his  valour,  and 
his  victories,  and  no  reference  whatever  to  the  im 
portant  fact  (to  us),  but  not  creditable  (to  him),  that 
he  had  surrendered  his  sword  to  Washington  at  York- 
town!  At  Westminster,  Bunner  rebelled  against  the 
great  crowd  of  men  in  the  Abbey  who  were  nobodies 
but  princes  or  royal  dukes.  He  was  impressed,  how 
ever,  at  standing  so  close  to  the  mortal  parts  of  so 
many  immortal  men,  and  he  was  subdued  and  respect 
ful  as  we  sat  in  the  Poets'  Corner.  '  '  There  are  some 


442  Galhs  in  a  TLibrar? 

good  and  great  Englishmen,  after  all,  Harry,"  I 
said. 

"  Yes,"  he  replied,  "  there  are  three  classes  of  Eng 
lishmen  whom  I  can  endure  —  the  Irish,  the  Scotch, 
and  the  dead!  " 

Bunner  was  a  poor  correspondent,  not  fond  of  writing 
or  answering  letters,  even  after  he  learned  to  dictate. 
But  when  he  did  write,  he  wrote  as  he  talked  and  as  he 
felt,  directly  from  the  heart.  Some  of  his  personal 
notes  to  me,  covering  a  period  of  nearly  twenty  years, 
may  serve  to  show  to  those  who  knew  him  only  as  the 
editor  of  Puck  and  as  the  author  of  the  Midge  and  of 
many  pieces  of  charming  verse  what  sort  of  man  this 
Bunner  was  to  his  friends: 


,  August  28,  1891. 

"  I  am  just  back  from  Canada,  and  I  don't  care  who 
calls  me  an  Englishman  so  long  as  nobody  calls  me  a 
French  Canadian.  That  would  call  for  bloodshed. 

"All  the  same,  Quebec  is  the  delight  of  my  liver, 
and  the  hostelry  of  Dennis  O'Hare  is  the  Home  of  my 
Heart.  That  is  where  '  the  whole  house,  sorr,  is  mo- 
hogany;  and  none  but  the  gintry  lives  in  this  quarter. 
No,  sorr  —  onless  this  house  —  only  gintlemen,  sorr!  ' 

"  I  have  brought  you  a  little  copper-plate,  torn  from 
a  book,  of  William  Charles  Macready,  in  armour, 
mighty  prodigious;  the  old  Albion  print  of  Ellen  Tree, 
as  Iony  in  all  her  legs;  and  a  picture  of  Napoleon,  not 
in  your  collection,  I  think.  It  is  a  hand-painted  print 


Bunnei's  letters  443 

published  about  Waterloo  time,  showing  N.  B.  mounted 
on  a  prancing  charger,  leading  on  his  troops  to  igno 
minious  defeat. 

"  The  Missus  joins  me  to-morrow.  She  is  at  New 
London  gathering  in  the  children. 

"Why  can't  you  and  Mrs,  Hutton  leave  the  in 
clement  heights  of  Onteora,  and  come  and  frivol  with 
us  for  a  space  at  Nutley  ?  You  shall  have  all  the  rooms 
you  want,  and  every  opportunity  to  loaf  or  to  work,  as 
may  please  you. 

"Please,  Mrs.  Hutton,  make  him  say  yes!  .  .  . 
Now  what  is  the  matter  with  finishing  up  the  season 
at  Nutley  ?  If  you  want  to  be  busy  I  can  be  busy  too. 
Give  our  love  to  your  Lady,  and  suggest  to  her  this 
means  of  breaking  off  the  Onteora  habit. ' ' 

"February  5,  1892. 

"  It  is  an  elegant  gilt-edged  joy  to  catch  you  on  an  un 
answered  letter;  but  coming  across  this  sheet  of  paper 
reminds  me  that  I  sent  you  its  fellow  some  time  in 
August  or  September,  a  few  days  after  my  return  from 
Quebec,  telling  you  I  had  picked  up  three  aged  prints 
in  that  city,  which  I  thought  would  please  your  fancy, 
and  that  they  were  lying  in  the  office  waiting  to  know 
whether  they  should  go  to  you  to  Thirty-fourth  Street 
or  to  Onteroarer. 

"Since  then  various  events,  including  seven  grips 
under  our  humble  roof,  have  conspired  to  make  me 
forget  the  three  gems  of  art.  One  is  Miss  Ellen  Tree, 


444  Galfcs  in  a  library 

in  a  dress-reform  skirt;  one  is  W.  C.  Macready,  thirst 
ing  for  somebody's  gore;  and  the  third  is  a  Napoleon, 
which  will  give  your  collection  the  jim-jams.  I  will 
mail  them  to  you. 

"  I  was  very  sorry  that  we  could  n't  hit  it  off  with 
Mr.  [Ripley]  Anthony.  The  more  so,  that  I  had  seen 
his  picture  at  the  Academy,  and  had  taken  a  great 
shine  to  it.  But  I  'm  afraid  our  style  of  pen- work  was 
a  little  too  stiff  for  him.  In  fact,  if  a  man  does  that 
kind  of  work,  he  can't  do  anything  else.  But  he  can 
paint;  there  is  no  doubt  about  that! 

' '  How  are  you  all  ?  We  are  well  and  I  am  work 
ing.  I  have  a  sort  of  a  novelette  on  hand,  two  or  three 
short  stories,  and  some  other  stuff;  but  of  course  I  am 
away  behind  with  everything  since  that  grip  hit  me. 

"  I  bought  me  The  Literary  Landmarks  of  Edin 
burgh^  and  I  read  them  too.  What  are  you  going  to 
Landmark  next  ?  You  can't  do  much  with  New  York, 
but  you  can  do  something  with  the  suburbs — Sunny- 
side,  Yonkers,  Long  Island  Sound,  Roslyn,  etc.  It 
would  probably  not  be  used  as  a  hand-book  by  a  throng 
of  eager  tourists,  but  it  would  make  mighty  interesting 
reading.  And  it  would  give  you  a  chance  to  become 
as  familiar  with  the  outskirts  of  the  city  you  live  in  as 
you  are  familiar  with  the  outskirts  of  London  and  other 
second-hand  towns.  And  when  you  push  your  way 
up  the  Passaic  Valley,  where  Irving,  and  Hoffman, 
and  their  crowd  used  to  sport,  and  where  Frank  Fores 
ter  lived  on  a  desert  island,  you  might  push  a  little 


jfrlenblp  Appreciation         445 

farther,  and  come  and  see  a  fellow  named  Bunner, 
who  lives  up  that  way,  in  the  House  of  Spare  Bed 
rooms.  He  is  said  to  be  of  an  amiable  and  thirsty 
disposition. 

"  Mr.  Samuel  Pepys  was  cut  for  the  stone,  at  Mr. 
Turner's,  in  Salisbury  Court,  on  March  26,  1658,  and 
he  never  missed  an  annual  opportunity  of  reverting  to 
the  agreeable  subject.  It  may  interest  you  to  know 
that  January  16,  1892,  was  the  first  anniversary  of 
my  swearing  off  on  cigarettes;  and  that  whereas  in 
January  of  1891  my  trousers  were  32  waist  measure 
ment,  they  are  now  34,  and  I  take  great  comfort  in  a 
pipe. 

"  We  've  vaccinated  a  baby  to-day.  We  keep  a  pig, 
two  dogs,  two  cats,  and  we  are  contemplating  a  donkey; 
the  dogs  are  mixed  in  their  ancestry,  but  they  do  not 
bite. 

"  With  our  united  love  we  are  yours, 

11  H.  C.  B.  &Co." 

Under  date  of  November  19,  1893,  he  wrote: 

"  I  am  in  for  anything  to  do  Irving  honour,  in  The 
Kinsmen  or  out.  I  think  he  ought  to  get  a  laurel 
wreath,  in  silver,  or  some  such  enduring  tribute  this 
trip;  for  his  '  Becket '  is  one  of  the  biggest  things 
I  ever  saw,  and,  besides,  he  deserves  great  credit  for 
being  an  Englishman,  and  yet  conducting  himself 
white;  which  must  be  the  toughest  job  in  the  way  of 
acting  that  any  man  ever  undertook.  Nor  have  I  any 


446  Galfcs  in  a  Xibrar$ 

objection  to  doing  a  little  of  the  work — what  little  I 
can  do  as  a  hard- worked  suburban. 

"  I  wish,  also,  you  would  think  very  thinkingly 
about  doing  something  for  Brander,  and  in  a  general 
way,  too;  not  through  any  one  club,  or  through  the 
college,  or  through  any  magazine  gang.  He  has  been 
good  to  all  sorts  of  people,  and  they  ought  all  to  have 
a  chance  to  get  back  at  him.  As  far  as  I  know,  he 
has  never  had  any  sort  of  dinner  given  to  him — outside 
of  private  affairs,  I  mean — except  that  little  one  we 
gave  him  at  the  Brunswick,  almost  ten  years  ago. 

"  We  ought  to  do  something  very  good,  and  not  in 
the  least  bit  cliquey,  for  him.  To  do  that,  I  will  work 
all  you  please,  and  will,  if  necessary,  come  into  town  to 
do  the  work. 

"  Love  from  ourn  to  yourn." 

This  led  to  the  very  successful  dinner  given  to  Mr. 
Matthews  at  Sherry's  in  the  month  of  December,  1893. 
Mr.  Charles  Dudley  Warner  presided;  Mark  Twain, 
Mr.  Stedman,  Mr.  Howells,  and  Professor  Sloane,  then 
of  Princeton,  spoke.  And  Bunner  himself,  who  read  a 
tender  and  characteristic  poem,  was  as  happy  over  it 
all,  and  as  proud,  as  if  he  had  been  the  guest  of  the 
occasion. 

"NuTI,EY,  February  3,  1894. 

"  In  compliance  with  the  terms  of  the  circular,  just 
received,  concerning  the  supper  of  The  Kinsmen,  I  en 
close  you  my  check  for  '  Four  Dollars  without  wine.' 


<&ue$tion  447 


I  am  glad  that  I  am  not  required  to  send  wine  with  the 
check,  for  I  doubt  if  I  could  find  any  dry  enough  to 
pass  the  United  States  Post  Office,  as  permissible  mail 
matter.  '  ' 

I  saw  Bunner  a  week  or  so  before  he  went  to  Cali 
fornia,  when  I  was  more  than  shocked  at  his  condition. 
He  never  had  enough  physical  strength  to  support  his 
active  brain,  and  he  was  very  feeble,  although  in  many 
ways  he  was  the  same  old  Bunner.  We  parted  at  the 
little  station  at  Nutley,  and  as  the  train  passed  on  he 
waved  a  cheerful  "  God  be  with  you."  But  my  vision 
was  blurred,  and  I  saw  him  dimly  through  my  tears. 

We  met  for  the  last  time  but  a  little  while  before  the 
end  came.  He  had  not  lost  his  indomitable  spirit,  and 
he  was  full  of  hope.  He  told  me  the  plots  of  stories  he 
intended  to  write,  spoke  of  his  plans  for  future  work, 
and,  as  he  himself  expressed  it,  he  was  determined  to 
"  pull  through."  \ 

I  wonder  when  and  how  soon  we  are  to  meet  again  ? 


INDEX 


Abbey,  Edwin,  caricature  of, 
303;  illustrations  of,  321; 
Tile  Club  likeness  of,  414 

Abbey,  Westminster,  with 
Booth  in,  74;  the  stone  to 
Newton  in,  188;  tomb  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  in,  190; 
statue  of  Disraeli  in,  195; 
Mary  Anderson  and  Dean 
Stanley  in,  313;  effect  on 
John  Fiske  of,  345 

Actors,  the  standing  of,  62; 
anecdotes  regarding,  63 , 
65  ;  children  of,  65 ;  Booth's 
opinion  on  the  art  of,  85 ; 
reminiscences  by,  115,  1 1 6 ; 
article  on,  142 

Alcott,  Louisa  M.,  meeting 
with,  381 

Aldrich,  Thomas  Bailey,  near 
neighbours,  1 2 ;  friendship 
of  Uncle  John  with,  13; 
Barrett- Aldrich  anecdote, 
13;  Marjory  Daw,  13;  joke 
about  the  Washington  por 
trait,  83 ;  as  charter  mem 
ber  of  The  Players,  86; 
as  originator  of  the  name, 
87;  joke  on  the  trials  of 
Job,  1 63;  letters  by,  303 

American  Actor  Series,  edit 
ing  of,  262;  royalties  on, 

275 

Anderson,  Mary,  Dickens  pil 
grimage  of,  309;  in  Lon 
don,  311;  courtesy  of,  312  ; 
in  Westminster  Abbey 


with,  3 1 3 ;  at  Stratford  with, 
314;  a  pretty  scene,  323 

Articles,  first  published,  32; 
on  Lester  Wallack,  106; 
magazine,  133;  fate  of,  136; 
on  actors,  142 

Art  of  story  telling,  Mark 
Twain's  opinion  of,  6; 
Kipling's  art  of,  412 

Authors  Club,  a  meeting  at 
the,  411 

Autographs,  collectors  of, 
289;  begging  letters  for 
291,  292;  demands  for 
famous,  296;  the  stealing 
of,  299,  301 ;  valuable,  304; 
Bryant's,  305;  Irving's, 
306;  Mary  Anderson's,  310; 
with  new  hat,  405 


B 


Baillie,  Joanna,  a  strange  ig 
norance  about,  270 

Barrett,  Lawrence,  Aldrich's 
bon-mot  regarding,  13;  as 
charter  member  of  The 
Players,  86;  fondness  of 
Booth  for,  88;  shock  to 
Booth  of  the  death  of,  89 ; 
as  author,  94;  illegibility 
of  writing  by,  95;  ante 
cedents  of,  95,  96;  charac 
teristic  of,  97,  98,  99;  por 
trait  by  Millet  of,  98;  ill 
ness  of,  99;  family  rela 
tions  of,  100;  friendship  of 
Laurence  Hutton  wittTthe 
family  of,  100;  naming  of 


449 


450 


flnbey 


Barrett  (Continued) 

the  Millet  baby  by,  101, 
102,  at  Maidenhead,  103; 
effect  of  Lord  Houghton's 
reminiscence  on,  104;  ar 
ticle  on,  143 ;  price  of  death 
mask  of,  180;  coincidence 
of  letter  by,  1 80 ;  sentiment 
regarding  mask  of,  1 8 1 ;  at 
Stratford  with,  182;  at 
Stoke  Pogis  with,  263;  re 
quest  for  autograph  of, 
297 ;  naming  of  The  Kins 
men  by,  325 

Beethoven ,  the  two  masks  of, 
172;  place  in  the  British 
Phrenological  Society  of, 

T73 

Behind  the  scenes,  61 

Bentham,  mention  by  Combe 
of,  178;  posthumous  fate 
of,  179 

Black,  William,  caricature 
of,  303;  as  Kinsman,  316; 
personality  of,  317;  the 
apartments  of,  318;  first 
meeting  with,  319;  the 
writing  of  Judith  Shake 
speare  by,  321;  Carlyle's 
remark  to,  321;  letters 
from,  322,  323,  324 

Bonapart,  Napoleon,  recog 
nition  by  the  extraordinary 
man,  54;  explanation  of 
the  recognition, 5 6 ;  interest 
of  O'Reilly  in,  164;  the 
Antomarchi  mask  of,  165; 
the  last  hours  of,  166 

Booth,  Edwin,  engagement 
of  Ward  by,  66 ;  off  and  on 
the  stage,  68;  letter  about 
his  wife's  illness,  70;  last 
portrait  of,  7 1 ;  first  meet 
ing  with,  71;  at  Saratoga 
with,  72 ;  daily  companion 
ship  with,  73 ;  in  the 
cloisters  of  Westminster, 
74;  sense  of  humour,  74; 
nonsense  verse  by,  75; 


generosity  of,  76,  77,  82; 
friendship  with  Black 
Betty,  79;  Pinafore  pun, 
80;  Marjory  Telford  and, 
81;  sympathy  of,  81,  82; 
as  man  and  as  actor,  83; 
tribute  by  Jefferson  to,  83  ; 
opinion  on  the  art  of  the 
actor,  85;  tribute  to  his 
father,  86 ;  devotion  to  The 
Players,  88;  shock  of  Bar 
rett's  death  to,  88 ;  last  en 
gagement  of ,  89 ;  article  on, 
143 ;  first  meeting  with  Ben 
Caunt  of,  212;  effect  of 
Lincoln  mask  on,  212; 
taking  of  the  masks  of, 
213;  gift  of  Burke  mask  by, 
216;  obituary  of,  230;  as 
Kinsman,  329 

Boswell,  James,  burial-place 
of,  273 

Boucicault,  Dion,  perfection 
of  the  mask  of,  193;  suc 
cessful  plays  of,  194 

Brougham,  Lord,  cast  of 
head  of,  149;  the  extraor 
dinary  nose  of,  208 

Brown,  Dr.  John,  meeting 
with,  286;  personality  of, 
287 

Bruce,  Robert,  cast  of  head 
of,  1 49 ;  exhumation  of, 

IS2.  !53 

Brunei,  Junior,  builder  of 
Great  Western,  162 

Bull  Dog,  origin  of  Princeton, 
148 ;  likeness  to  Aunt  Jane, 
149 

Bunner,  H.  C.,  early  ac 
quaintance  with,  434;  din 
ners  with,  435;  poems  by, 
436,  437;  marriage  of,  438; 
lost  joke  of,  440 ;  letters  by, 
442-446 

Burke,  Edmund,  gift  by 
Booth  of  mask  of,  216 

Burns,  Robert,  cast  of  the 
head  of,  149;  exhumation 


flnbey 


451 


Burns  (Continued') 

of,    152,   154;  the  window 
of,  279;  Scott  and,  280 

Burr,  Aaron,  explanation  re 
garding  mask  of,  168;  the 
personality  of,  1 69 ;  an  un 
fortunate  resemblance  to, 
169;  suggestion  to  Ben- 
tham  by,  178 

Butler,  burial-place  of,  272 


Cable,  George  W.,  at  Hart 
ford,  417 

Calhoun,  John  C.,  possession 
of  mask  of,  167;  the  mak 
ing  of  the  mask  of,  170 

Canova,  mask  of,  179 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  introduc 
tion  to  Owen  of,  1 63 ;  pos 
session  of  Cromwell  mask 
by,  173;  cast  of  hand  of, 
226 

Caunt,  Ben,  151;  mask  of, 
2 1 1 ;  alleged  association 
with  Byron,  212 

Cavour,  price  of  mask  of, 
1 80 ;  discovery  of  the  mask 
of,  184 

Chalmers,  Rev.  Thomas, 
finding  of  the  mask  of,  180 

"Charley,"  first  acquaint 
ance  with,  2  5 ;  his  devo 
tion,  26,  28;  association 
with  "Andrew,"  27 

Cheshire  Cheese,  The,  false 
association  with  Johnson, 
274 

Chopin,  cast  of  hand  of,  229 

Gibber,  Colley,  contradiction 
of  evidence  regarding,  266 

Clay,  Henry,  interest  of 
sculptors  in  mask  of,  167 

Cleveland,  Grover,  at  dinner 
with,  432 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor, 
mask  of,  159;  interest  by 
Ernest  Hartley  Coleridge 


in  mask  of,  160;  resem 
blance  of  Ernest  Hartley 
Coleridge  to,  1 6 1 ;  uncer 
tainty  regarding  mask  of, 
1 68 

Combe,  George,  printed  lec 
tures  of,  152;  possession  of 
the  Cromwell  mask  by, 
173;  burial-place  of,  174; 
mention  of  Bentham  mask 
by,  178 

Criticism,  spirit  of,  122;  pro 
fessional  and  domestic, 
140;  instance  of,  141;  im 
personal,  142,  143;  sar 
castic,  1 45;  stupid,  147 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  cast  of 
head  of,  149  ;  the  two 
masks  of,  173;  wax  mask 
of,  174 

Curran,  John  Philpot,  cast  of 
head  of,  149;  personality 
of,  216;  likeness  by  Law 
rence  of,  217 

Curtis,  George  William,  ac 
quaintance  with,  425; 
courtesy  of  Harpers  to, 
427 

Custom-house,  duties  exacted 
by,  178;  damage  done  by, 

178  D 

Dante,  examples  of  casts  of, 
189;  inaccuracies  of  guide 
books  regarding,  190 

Dickens,  Charles,  2 ;  style  of, 
29;  readings  by,  32;  as 
actor,  35  ;  a  scene  from,  37  ; 
as  a  reader,  39-42;  Christ 
mas  Carol,  43;  letters,  44; 
as  a  man,  44 ;  as  a  poet,  44 ; 
lasting  qualities  of,  45 ;  as 
a  religious  man,  47;  quo 
tations  from,  48-50;  ex 
planation  of  Tom  All- 
Alone's,  52;  the  extraor 
dinary  man  and,  56; 
Owen's  friendship  with 


452 


Unbey 


Dickens  (Continued} 

162;  a  pilgrimage,  309; 
No.  15  Buckingham 
Street,  318;  the  nuts  of 
Barcelona,  353;  Mrs. 
Field's  acquaintance  with, 
357;  as  a  hero,  368 

Dickens,  the  younger,  dis 
cussion  regarding  Tom 
All-Alone's,  38;  dinner 
with,  38;  friendship  with, 
39;  at  Osgood  dinner,  332 

Disraeli,  Benjamin,  fate  of 
the  mask  of,  195 

du  Maurier,  George,  request 
for  autograph  letter  by, 
297;  Laurence  Hutton's 
meeting  with,  334;  letters 
by,  3351  the  Whistler, 
trouble  with,  338 

D'Urfey,  Tom,  mural  tablet 
to,  55 


E 


Early  reading,  28;  fact  and 
fiction,  29;  David  Copper- 
field,  43 ;  Pendennis,  43 ;  a 
course  of,  123 

Edwards,  Harry,  accident  to 
mask  of,  196;  pursuits  of, 
196;  interest  in  portraits 
in  plaster  of,  197 

Egyptian  Princess,  mummy 
hand  of,  229 

Eliot,  George,  letter  of  Fiske 
regarding,  303 ;  Charles 
Reade's  opinion  of,  342; 
Fiske's  comment  on,  350 

Emerson,      Ralph     Waldo, 
meeting  with,  373 

Errors,  typographical,  253, 
255;  guidebook,  272 

Ex  Libris,  257 

F 

Farragut,  Loyal,  129 
Fiction,  mothers  in.  nj. 


Field,  Kate,  Dr.  John  Brown 
and,  287;  personality  of, 
382;  the  bequests  of,  384 

Fisher,  Clara,  1 1 6 ;  news 
paper  verse  about,  117 

Fiske,  John,  size  of  the  head 
of ,  1 70 ;  story  of  Voltaire  by, 
179;  letters  by,  303;  first 
visit  to  England,  344;  at 
Stratford,  346;  in  Paris, 
346;  letters  from,  348; 
peculiarities  of,  352;  Latin 
motto  of,  355 

Fitz-Gerald,  Edward,  book 
plate  of,  404 

Florence,  William  J.,  as  Cap 
tain  Cuttle,  36;  death  of, 
36;  as  charter  member  of 
The  Players,  87  ;  versatility 
of,  109;  the  last  joke  of, 
no;  friendship  with  Mrs. 
Kendal,  no;  the  pall 
bearers  of ,  1 1 1 ;  Guest-Book 
verse  by,  in;  last  visit  to 
The  Players,  112;  tribute 
to  women  by  McCullough 
and,  114;  article  on,  143 

France,  Henry  IV.  of,  ex 
humation  of,  152;  cast  of 
face  of,  154 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  mask 
of,  200 ;  authenticity  of 
mask  of,  201;  burial-place 
of,  202 

Frost,  Arthur  B.,  at  Tile 
Club  with  Vedder,  414 


Garrick,  David,  coloured 
print  of,  55;  allusion  by 
Lord  Houghton  to,  104; 
Rogers  account  of,  105; 
mask  of,  206 

Gilbert,  Mrs.  G.  H.,  as  Hester 
Dethridge,  122 

Goethe,  cast  of  hand  of,  224 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  burial- 
place  of,  273 


flnbey 


453 


Gower,  John,  burial-place  of, 
274 

Grant,  General,  anecdote  of 
Jefferson  and,  91;  the 
mounting  of  the  mask  of, 
170;  the  two  casts  of,  175 

Great,  Frederick  the,  151; 
unusual  detail  of  the  cast 
of,  170;  royal  dignity  of, 
171 

H 

Hands,  collection  of  casts  of, 
223;  Voltaire  and  Whit 
man,  223;  Lincoln,  Thack 
eray,  and  Goethe,  224,  225 ; 
Duke  of  Wellington,  225 

Harte,  Bret,  talk  by  Mark 
Twain  about,  407;  popu 
larity  of,  408;  and  Mark 
Twain,  409 

Haydon,  injuries  done  to  the 
mask  of,  177 

Hood,  Tom,  The  Bridge  of 
Sighs,  356 

Houghton,  Lord,  reminis 
cences  by,  104 

Hunt,  William,  cast  of  hand 
of,  228 

Hutton,  John,  financial  rela 
tions  with,  1 8,  23;  Saint- 
Gauden's  likeness  of,  19; 
death  of,  27;  study  of  fic 
tion  with,  29;  dedication 
to,  60 ;  interest  in  casts  of, 
150;  the  hero  of,  179 


I 


Irving,  Henry,  Mr.  Sherry's 
likeness  of,  21;  as  Dom- 
bey,  36;  generosity  of, 
66;  Jefferson's  message 
to,  93;  autograph  letter 
by,  307;  Kinsman  "bone," 
328 


J 


James,  Henry  >  at  Copyright 
League  meeting,  415 

Jefferson,  Joseph,  as  succes 
sor  of  Booth  in  presidency 
of  The  Players,  83 ;  tribute 
to  Booth,  84;  as  charter 
member  of  The  Players,  88 ; 
letter  regarding  the  death 
of  Booth,  90;  forgetfull- 
ness  of,  91;  anecdote  of 
Grant  and,  91 ;  Fourth  of 
July  verse,  93 ;  verse  on 
himself,  93 ;  identification 
of  Laurence  Hutton  by, 
94;  story  of  "Billy"  Flor 
ence  by,  no;  greeting  of 
Mrs.  Maeder  by,  118;  obit 
uary  of,  232 ;  verse  by,  406 


K 


Kean,  Edmund,  mask  of ,  206 ; 
burial-place  of,  207 

Keats,  John,  expression  of 
cast  of,  176;  opinions  re 
garding  the  mask  of,  177 

Keller,  Helen,  the  hand  of 
Whittier  and,  227;  cast  of 
hand  of,  227;  first  meeting 
with,  384;  education  of, 
386;  Mark  Twain  and,  390; 
letters  by,  397 

Kingsley,  Henry,  funeral  of, 
130,  132 

Kinsmen,  The,  initial  idea  of, 
325;  "bone,"  328;  mem 
bership  of,  329 ;  du  Maurier 
at,  334 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  basis  of 
the  Recessional,  1 1 ;  the 
short  stories  of,  412;  meet 
ing  with,  413 


Lamb,  Charles,  enjoyment  of 
the    taking    of    mask    of 


454 


flnfcer 


Lamb  (Continued) 

Wordsworth,  176;  ignor 
ance  of  clergyman  regard 
ing,  269 

Landlord,  the  crazy,  103 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  like 
ness  of  Curran  by,  217; 
mask  of,  217 

Leopardi,  personality  of,  185 ; 
portraits  of,  186 

Life,  the  literary,  anecdote 
of,  135;  remuneration  of, 
136;  anecdote  by  Mrs. 
Wiggin  of,  137;  trials  of, 
138;  methods  of,  233;  cer 
tain  details  of,  236;  duties 
of,  240;  curiosities  of,  244; 
demands  made  by,  248; 
typesetters'  part  in,  253; 
partnership  in,  261 ;  fame 
attending,  281;  an  in 
stance  of  fame  in,  317 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  effect  on 
Booth  of  mask  of,  212; 
taking  of  the  two  masks 
of,  213;  Mr.  Volk's  de 
scription  of,  214;  cast  of 
the  hand  of,  224;  finding  of 
the  cast,  225;  Helen  Kel 
ler's  recognition  of  death 
mask  of,  395 

Lincoln,  "Bob,"  129 

Liszt,  obtaining  the  mask  of, 
216 

Literary  Landmarks  of  Edin 
burgh,  The,  277;  details  of 
the  collecting  of  notes  for, 
279,  280 

Literary  Landmarks  of  Lon 
don,  The,  156;  origin  of  title, 
256;  first  suggestion  re 
garding,  264;  the  writing 
of,  266;  difficulties  cf  re 
search  for,  267 

Literary  Landmarks  of  (The), 
Venice,  Florence,  Rome, 
Jerusalem,  276 

Longfellow,  Henry  W.,  ac- 
quaintan^e  with,  369 ;  trib 


ute  to,  370;  Arthur  Brooks 
and,  371 ;  the  daughters  of, 
372;  New  Year's  party 
with,  373 

Louise,  Queen  of  Prussia,  au 
thenticity  of  mask  of,  170; 
the  beauty  of,  171 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  first 
meeting  with,  364;  his  love 
for  his  trees,  365;  an  im 
probable  event,  366 

Lynde,  Francis  Stetson,  23 


M 


Mabie,  Hamilton  W.,  23 

Mail,  The  Evening,  connec 
tion  with,  58 ;  staff  of,  119 ; 
letters  to,  123 

Malibran,  Madame,  authen 
ticity  of  mask  of,  183; 
false  mask  of,  222 

Man,  an  extraordinary,  51; 
recollections  of  Dickens, 
52;  recollections  of  the 
Duke  of  Wellington,  53; 
recognition  of  Napoleon's 
face,  54;  his  explanation, 

56 

Marat,  mask  of,  204;  burial- 
place  of,  205 

Mark  Twain,  opinion  of  story 
telling,  6;  at  the  Irving 
dinner,  2  2  ;  as  charter  mem 
ber  of  The  Players,  87; 
saying  about  mothers  by, 
186;  Kinsmen  initiation 
of,  326;  Helen  Keller  and, 
391;  Bret  Harte  and,  407; 
George  W.  Cable  and,  417; 
stories  about  the  children 
of,  418;  letters  from,  419; 
Corbett  and,  420 

Mason,  William,  friendship 
of  Celia  Thaxter  and,  380 

McClellan,  General,  meeting 
with,  128 

McCullough,  John,  as  Othello, 
62;  phonograph  rendering 


Unbey 


455 


McCullough  (Continued) 
of  "The  Ravings  of,"  113; 
mental  affliction  of,  113, 
114;  tribute  to  women  by, 
114;  article  on,  143;  in  the 
"scullery"  with,  198;  be 
lief  in  Shakespeare  of,  199 

McElligott,  Dr.,  method  of 
teaching,  1 5 ;  method  of 
reporting,  16 

Mendelssohn, Felix  Bartholdi, 
death  of,  171;  contem 
porary  allusion  to  taking 
of  the  mask  of,  172 

Miller,  Joaquin,  eccentrici 
ties  of ,  358,  359,  360; meet 
ing  of  Josie  with,  361 

Millet,  Frank,  portrait  of 
Barrett  by,  98 ;  naming  of 
the  son  of,  101,  102;  Mc 
Cullough  leaving  the  studio 
of,  113;  relative  sums  paid 
to,  277;  dinner  at  Broad 
way  with,  331 

Mirabeau,  mask  of,  204; 
burial-place  of,  205 

Montague,  Henry  J.,  death 
of,  107 ;  personal  charm  of, 
1 08;  anecdote  of  the  top 
ical  song,  108;  the  last 
spoken  words  of,  109 

Moore,  "Tom,"  biography  of 
Sheridan  by,  156;  authen 
ticity  of  the  cast  of,  159 

Morris,  Clara,  first  appear 
ance  of,  122 

Mulford,  Prentice,  love  affair 
of,  362;  characteristics  of, 

363  N 

Napoleon,  the  Third,  peculi 
arity  of  the  mask  of,  1 63 ; 
interest  of  O'Reilly  in,  164; 
morning  walks  of,  164; 
mounting  of  the  mask  of, 
171 

Newspaper  fakes,  120,  121, 
122;  London  Letters,  131 


Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  151;  un 
certainty  regarding  mask 
of,  1 68;  bust  by  Roubiliac 
of,  187;  burial-place  of ,  188 


O'Reilly,  John  Boyle,  per 
sonality  of,  163;  joke  by 
Aldrich  on  the  name  of, 
1 63 ;  interest  in  Napoleon 
masks,  of,  164 

Osgood,  James  R.,  at  Maiden 
head,  103;  interest  in  ar 
ticles  on  Portraits  in  Plas 
ter,  151;  as  a  Kinsman, 
327;  dinner  given  by,  333 

Owen,  Sir  Richard,  life  mask 
of,  162 


Paine,  Thomas,  authenticity 
of  mask  of,  209 

Palmerston,  Lord,  perfection 
of  the  mask  of,  193;  price 
paid  for  mask  of,  194;  typ 
ographical  error  regard 
ing,  253 

Partnership,  A  Literary,  261 

Pius  IX.,  purchase  of  mask 
of,  184;  funeral  services  of, 

i85 

Plaster,  Portraits  in,  origin  of 
title,  258 

Players,  The,  62;  gift  by 
Booth  to,  82 ;  origin  of,  86; 
the  naming  of,  87;  inaug 
uration  of,  88 

Plays  and  Players,  60;  origin 
of  title,  256 

Portraits  in  Plaster,  148; 
dearth  of  literature  on, 
151;  difficulties  of  research 
on,  152 ;  lectures  of  Combe 
on.  152;  sentiment  regard 
ing,  1 8 1 ;  enthusiasm  of 
collecting,  184;  processes 
in  making  of,  189;  occa 
sional  misrepresentation  of, 


456 


•fln&ey 


Portraits  (Continued) 

199;  Washington's  objec 
tion  to,  203  ;  negro  type  of, 
217;  process  of,  218;  opin 
ion  of  Laurence  Hutton  re 
garding,  219;  collecting  of, 
220;  method  of  exhibiting, 
221;  money  value  of,  222 ; 
anecdote  about  money 
value  of,  222;  origin  of  the 
title,  258 


Reade,  Charles,  letter  by,  342 
Recipe    Book,    The  Authors', 

293 

Reed,  Thomas  B.,  on  the 
yachting  trip,  429;  last 
letter  of,  43 1 ;  meeting  with 
Cleveland,  432 

Robespierre,  authenticity  of 
mask  of,  204 

Root,  Elihu,  23 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  opin 
ions  regarding  the  mask  of, 
214;  cast  of  hand  of,  226 

Russell,  Horace,  23 


Sailor,  anecdote  of  old,  146 
Saint-Gaudens,   brooch  like 
ness  of  John  Hutton,   19; 
opinion   on  mask  of  Clay 
by,  167;  opinion  regarding 
Lincoln     mask     of,     213; 
finding    of   the    hands    of 
Lincoln  by,   225;  hand  of 
Stevenson  by,  227 
Schiller,  story  of  the  cast  of, 

172 

School  days,  end  of,  17 
Scotch,    nomenclature,    125; 
local      information,      280; 
specimens  of  wit,  284 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  proportion 
of  the  face  of,  191;  death 
mask  of,  192 ;  the  last  drive 


of,  193 ;  Old  Mortality,  283 ; 
relationship  with,  284; 
crayon  likeness  of,  285; 
anecdote  about  the  writ 
ings  of,  375 

Shakespeare,  William,  Lord 
Houghton's  connecting 
link,  104;  the  mounting  of 
the  mask  of,  170;  fondness 
of  Barrett  for,  182;  cast  of 
the  bust  of,  1 90 ;  contro 
versy  regarding  likeness  of, 
191;  description  by  John 
Aubrey  of,  192;  belief  of 
actors  in,  199;  the  burial- 
place  of,  315;  the  country 

of,  3*5 

Sheridan,  General,  cast  of 
head  of,  1 49 ;  confusion 
with  Richard  Brinsley 
Sheridan  by  Mr.  Kruell, 
158 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley, 
155;  circumstances  of  the 
death  of,  156;  cast  of  the 
hand  of,  156;  Savile  Club 
legend  regarding,  157; 
confusion  with  General 
Sheridan  by  Mr.  Kruell, 
158;  uncertainty  regarding 
mask  of,  168;  place  in 
British  Phrenological  So 
ciety  of,  173 

Sherman,  General,  as  charter 
member  of  The  Players,  87  ; 
death  mask  of,  99;  Bar 
rett's  last  request  regard 
ing  mask  of,  1 80 ;  shaking 
hands  with,  182 

Stedman,  Edmund  Clar 
ence,  opinion  of  Dickens's 
verse,  44;  dinner  given  to 
Black  by,  320 

Sterne,  Lawrence,  uncer 
tainty  regarding  mask  of, 
1 68;  circumstances  of  the 
death  of,  210 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis, 
cast  of  hand  of,  227 


flnbey 


457 


Stockton,  Frank,  at  the  gym 
nasium,  421 ;  meeting  with, 
422 ;  a  test  of,  422 

Stoddard,  Richard  Henry, 
acquaintance  with,  423 ; 
dinner  to,  424 

Stories,  plots  for,  3,  4,  5 

Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher, 
anecdote  about,  418 

Sweden,  Charles  XII.  of,  152 ; 
exhumation  of,  155 

Swift,  Dean,  authorities  on, 
199;  death  mask  of,  200 

Swinburne,  callers  on,  358 


Tadema,  Alma,  first  meeting 
of  Mrs.  Hutton  with,  330; 
a  curious  misunderstand 
ing.  33 2;  nrst  meeting  of 
Laurence  Hutton  with,  333 

Tasso,  the  original  mask  of, 
186 

Terry,  Ellen,  desire  to  pre 
serve  Mr.  Sherry's  chef- 
d'oeuvre,  21 ;  opinion  of 
Eleanor  Duse,  2 1 ;  Helen 
Keller  and,  392,  393 

Thackeray,  William  Make 
peace,  2;  "  that-reminds- 
me"  style  of,  29;  inscrip 
tion  in  Christmas  Carol  by 
Dickens  to,  43;  friendship 
with  Owen  of,  162 ;  mount 
ing  of  the  cast  of,  170; 
finding  the  mask  of,  207 ; 
cast  of  the  hand  of,  224; 
attitude  of  the  hand  of, 
225 ;  chair  in  Garrick  Club, 
274;  caricature  by,  403; 
book-plate  by,  404 

Thaxter,  Celia,  at  Appledore 
with,  209;  startling  pre 
sentation  of  the  mask  of, 
210;  request  for  autograph 
of,  296;  the  funeral  of,  376; 
life  and  personality,  377; 
the  writings  of,  381 


Tile  Club,  members  of,  414; 
incident  at,  415 

Titles,  selection  of,  256; 
Shakespeare  as  source  of, 
259;  appropriate,  260 


Vedder,  Elihu,  at  Tile  Club 
with,  414 

Verse,  inspiration  of,  10,  n; 
by  Laurence  Hutton,  9,  31, 
243,  252 

Veteran,  a  young,  59;  ex 
periences  of,  6 1 

Voltaire,  anecdote  regarding 
mask  of,  179;  cast  of  hand 
of,  223 

W 

Wallack,  Lester,  his  reminis 
cences,  105;  family  rela 
tions  of,  107;  fondness  for 
Harry  Montague,  107; 
last  letter  of,  108;  death 
of,  1 08;  burial-place  of, 
1 08;  article  on,  143;  "lead 
ing  old  man  "  in  company 
of,  196 

Walton,     Izaak,    monogram 

of,  3T3 

Warde,  Frederick,  as  lago, 
62;  as  Othello,  64 

Warner,  Charles  Dudley, 
photograph  of  hand  of, 
228;  acceptance  of  manu 
script  by,  235;  suggestions 
to  Laurence  Hutton  by, 
2  64 ;  first  meeting  with ,  40  2 

Washington,  George,  por 
trait  of,  83;  cast  of  the 
head  of,  149;  original  cast 
of,  202;  the  process  ob 
jected  to  by,  203 

Webster,  Daniel,  possession 
of  mask  of,  167 ;  the  mak 
ing  of  the  mask  of,  170 


458 


flnbey 


Wellington,  Duke  of,  leaving 
the  Horse  Guards,  53; 
funeral  of,  54;  acquaint 
ance  with  the  extraordi 
nary  man,  56;  cast  of 
hands  of,  225 

Whistler,  James  McNeill,  the 
caricature  in  Trilby  of,  338 ; 
Harpers'  apology  to,  341 

Whitman,  Walt,  mask  of, 
214;  personality  of,  215; 
cast  of  hand  of,  223;  first 
meeting  of  Laurence  Hut- 
ton  with,  224 


Whittier,  John  Greenleaf, 
cast  of  hand  of,  227  ;  meet 
ing  with,  374;  anecdote 
told  by,  375 

Wiggin,  Kate  Douglas,  anec 
dote  by,  137;  Helen  Keller 
and,  392 

Winter,  William,  about 
Stratford  with,  315 

Wordsworth,  William,  "try 
ing-to-look-pleasant  "  ex 
pression  of,  176;  the  taking 
of  the  life  mask  of,  176; 
the  funeral  of,  177 


Jl:  Selection  from  the 
Catalogue  of 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Complete  Catalogues  cent 
on  application 


LITERARY  LANDMARKS  OF 
THE  SCOTTISH  UNIVERSITIES 

By  LAURENCE   HUTTON 

Crown  octavo.     With  42  full-page  illustrations. 
Net,  $1.25.     (By  mail,  $1.35) 

A  handsomely  illustrated  book  telling  of  the 
associations  that  have  grown  up  around  those  fam 
ous  institutions  of  learning  in  Scotland — the  Uni 
versities  of  Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Aberdeen,  and 
St.  Andrews. 

"  The  volume  has  an  adequacy  and  thoroughness,  and  is 
written  in  the  informing,  personal  style  which  was  Mr. 
Hutton's  characteristic  expression  of  his  delightful  person 
ality."—  The  Outlook. 

TALKS  IN  A  LIBRARY 
WITH  LAURENCE  HUTTON 

Recorded  by  ISABEL  MOORE 

Crown  octavo.     Profusely  illustrated.   Net,  $2.50 
(By  mail,  $2.75) 

Almost  everything  in  Mr.  Hutton's  library  was 
associated  with  some  notable  person  or  interesting 
event.  Mary  Anderson,  Edwin  Booth,  and  John 
Fiske  are  some  of  the  names  that  were  called  to  a 
visitor's  mind.  There  was  a  picture  of  the  room 
in  which  Dickens  wrote  "  David  Copperfield,"  a 
book-plate  made  by  Thackeray  for  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald,  and  a  marvellous  drawing  by  Mark  Twain. 
Mrs.  Moore  describes  this  rare  collection  in  a 
bright  entertaining  way  and  brings  up  many  pleas 
ant  memories  of  this  genial  and  cultivated  owner. 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

Mew  York  London 


Shelburne  Essays 

By  Paul  Elmer  More 

6  vols.     Crown  octavo. 
Each,  net,  $1.25.     (By  mail,  $1.35) 

Contents 

FIRST  SERIES:  A  Hermit's  Notes  on  Thoreau— The  Soli 
tude  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  —  The  Origins  of  Haw 
thorne  and  Poe — The  Influence  of  Emerson — The  Spirit 
of  Carlyle  —  The  Science  of  English  Verse  —  Arthur 
Symons  :  The  Two  Illusions — The  Epic  of  Ireland — 
Two  Poets  of  the  Irish  Movement — Tolstoy  ;  or,  The 
Ancient  Feud  between  Philosophy  and  Art — The  Re 
ligious  Ground  of  Humamtarianism. 

SECOND  SERIES:  Elizabethan  Sonnets— Shakespeare's  Son- 
nets — Lafcadio  Hearn — The  First  Complete  Edition  of 
Hazlitt  —  Charles  Lamb — Kipling  and  FitzGerald  — 
George  Crabbe  —  The  Novels  of  George  Meredith  — 
Hawthorne:  Looking  before  and  after  —  Delphi  and 
Greek  Literature — Nemesis :  or,  The  Divine  Envy, 

THIRD  SERIES  :  The  Correspondence  of  William  Cowper — 
Whittier  the  Poet — The  Centenary  of  Sainte-Beuve — 
The  Scotch  Novels  and  Scotch  History — Swinburne — 
Christina  Rossetti — Why  is  Browning  Popular? — A  Note 
on  Byron's  "Don  Juan" — Laurence  Sterne — J.  Henry 
Shorthouse—  The  Quest. 

FOURTH  SERIES  :  The  Vicar  of  Morwenstow — Fanny  Bur- 
ney—  A  Note  on  "  Daddy"  Crisp — George  Herbert — John 
Keats — Benjamin  Franklin — Charles  Lamb  Again — Walt 
Whitman — William  Blake— The  Theme  of  Paradise  Lost 
—The  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole. 

FIFTH  SERIES:  The  Greek  Anthology  —  The  Praise  of 
Dickens — George  Gissang — Mrs.  Gaskell — Philip  Freneau 
— Thoreau's  Journal — The  Centenary  of  Longfellow — 
Donald  G.  Mitchell— James  Thomson  ("  B.  V,")  —  Ches- 
terfield— Sir  Henry  Wotton. 

SIXTH  SERIES  [Studies  of  Religiotis  Dualism'}  :  The  Forest 
Philosophy  of  India  —  The  Bhagavad  Gita  —  Saint 
Augustine — Pascal — Sir  Thomas  Browne  —  Bunyan — • 
Rousseau — Socrates — The  Apology — Plato. 


A  Few  Press  Criticisms  on 
Shelburne  Essays 

**  It  is  a  pleasure  to  hail  in  Mr.  More  a  genuine  critic,  for 
genuine  critics  in  America  in  these  days  are  uncommonly 
scarce.  .  .  .  We  recommend,  as  a  sample  of  his  breadth, 
style,  acumen,  and  power  the  essay  on  Tolstoy  in  the  present 
volume.  That  represents  criticism  that  has  not  merely 
a  metropolitan  but  a  world  note.  .  .  .  One  is  thoroughly 
grateful  to  Mr.  More  for  the  high  quality  of  his  thought,  his 
serious  purpose,  and  his  excellent  style." — Harvard  Gradu 
ates'  Magazine. 

11  We  do  not  know  of  any  one  BOW  writing  who  gives 
evidence  of  a  better  critical  equipment  than  Mr.  More.  It 
is  rare  nowadays  to  find  a  writer  so  thoroughly  familiar  with 
both  ancient  and  modern  thought.  It  is  this  width  of  view, 
this  intimate  acquaintance  with  so  much  of  the  best  that  has 
been  thought  and  said  in  the  world,  irrespective  of  local 
prejudice,  that  constitute  Mr.  More's  strength  as  a  critic. 
He  has  been  able  to  form  for  himself  a  sound  literary  canon 
and  a  sane  philosophy  of  life  which  constitute  to  our  mind 
his  peculiar  merit  as  a  critic.*' — Independent. 

'•He  is  familiar  with  classical,  Oriental,  and  English 
literature;  he  uses  a  temperate,  lucid,  -weighty,  and  not 
ungraceful  style ;  he  is  aware  of  his  best  predecessors,  and  is 
apparently  on  the  way  to  a  set  of  philosophic  principles 
which  should  lead  him  to  a  high  and  perhaps  influential 
place  in  criticism.  .  .  .  We  believe  that  we  are  in  the 
presence  of  a  critic  who  must  be  counted  among  the  first  who 
take  literature  and  life  for  their  theme."—  London  Speaker. 


G.   P.   Putnam's  Sons 
New  York  London 


He  holds  a  place  alone  and  unapproachable  in 
the  history  of  critical  literature, 


By  C.  A.  SAINTE-BEUVE 

Portraits   of  the 
Seventeenth    Century 

Historic  and  Literary 
Translated  by  KATHARINE  P.  WORMELEY 

2  vols.,     octavo.      Gilt  tops.  30  Illustrations.      Net,  $5.00 

Portraits  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century 

Historic  and  Literary 

Translated  by  PL.  P.  WORMULEY  and  G.  B.  IVES 

2  vols.,  octavo.    Gilt  tops.    30  Illustrations.    Net,  $5.00 

The  quality,  the  discernment,  and  balance,  the 
intuitive  grasp  of  essentials,  the  grace,  force,  and 
jutsice  of  Sainte-Beuve's  critical  work  have  placed 
him  in  the  front  rank, — perhaps  it  would  be  better  to 
say,  have  given  him  a  place  alone  and  unapproach 
able  in  the  history  of  critical  literature.  In  the 
present  volumes,  Miss  Wormeley  and  Mr.  Iveshave 
selected  a  series  of  forty-eight  studies  of  men  and 
women,  literary  and  historical,  of  iyth  and  i8th 
Century  France. 

Miss  Wormeley  is  well-known  as  the  translator  of 
Balzac,  and  Mr.  Ives  as  the  translator  of  the  Series 
of  Little  French  Masterpieces. 

11  The  translator  is  a  true  servant  and  friend,  not  the  proverbial  traducer  ; 
none  but  Miss  Wormeley  could  have  been  selected  for  the  task,  and  she  has 
given  of  her  best,  her  indefatigable,  conscientious,  intellectual  best  which  has 
made  her  the  mistress  of  a  difficult  art." —  The  Evening  Mail. 


New  York       G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS         London